Give Whatever Ails You—Words

O, how lustily we sang together.  We were young airmen far from home.   We were immature, but we were expected to be mature.  We were supposed to be “macho” but we were anything but macho—we were really just little boys.  We were lonely, but we were not supposed to let it show. That’s why some thirty of us gathered in the Chapel once a week (as the Airmen’s Fellowship) to encourage and strengthen one another, to find purpose and meaning for what was happening to us and in us, and to sing songs of faith to bolster our spirits.  Our theme song was “It Is Well with My Soul.”  We sang it with gusto. We sang it with faith.  We sang it with conviction. We sang it with hope. We sang it as if all were really well with our souls—even though aware that things were not so well with our souls. We knew it, but we sang the song anyway.  “Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, It is well, it is well with my soul.”

“When peace, like a river, attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll; 

whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, It is well, it is well with my soul.”  

Looking back now, I think perhaps we were doing ourselves a favor.  Our being together once a week and singing that song was a form of therapy.  We were following Shakespeare’s admonition in Macbeth:  “Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.”  We gave our loneliness, our sadness, our frustrations, our inability to change things, WORDS!  Those words probably saved us from many a heart break.  We gave all that messy, confusing, bewildering  stuff that goes on inside young men—WORDS! 

Do yourself a favor, give words to express what goes on within you, give words to your confusion, grief, hurt, bewilderment—give words for what goes on with you and in you!  It is a form of therapy.  Feelings, thoughts, hurts, and trials, the “grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.

“And, Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight, the clouds be rolled back as a scroll; 

the trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend, even so, it is well with my soul.”

One view from the deck.