Hymn of the Exiled

The water was so hot my chest was tight, making it hard to breathe. Red streaks ran down my arms wherever the spray of the shower hit. I know they won’t calm down for hours afterward. My skin will be so tight and dry, not even the thickest lotion will soothe it. It will not prevent me from doing the whole ritual again before bed.

My household has been taken over by a stomach virus and a fraught election, both of which are my very worst nightmares for so many reasons. The anticipation, the attempted prevention, the fear, the worry, the sitting vigil, the exhaustion. Nothing soothes it but time. I can’t bleach anything enough. I can’t take too many showers. I can’t turn off CNN.

My Nana’s favorite hymn was “Because He Lives”. I can still hear her 2-packs- a- day whiskey tenor belting it out next to me in the pew that smelled like menthols and Werther’s Originals. My Grandpa’s favorite, who passed away when I was twelve was, “I Come to the Garden Alone”. We sang it dutifully at his funeral. I thought it was the most boring one in our repertoire. Now, it comes to me every time I’m outside. My mom used to sing, “Something About That Name” when I couldn’t fall asleep. I would comb my fingers through her thick, blonde hair and listen to her tremulous alto in the dark.

My lineage is drawn in quarter notes- my legacy in the chord progression- 1,4,5. I have sung the same words my ancestors sang for centuries- in their darkest hours. In their greatest joys. When my oldest was born, she was awake every 25 minutes. I cycled through a repertoire of Disney songs, Broadway tunes, and the hymns that connected me to generations of family and ancestors for the first 4 years of her life.

I haven’t thought about that set list in years. Not until I was in my second shower of the day today. It crashed into me like a wave; the insatiable need to sing it through. The set list the very same it was over a decade ago, came rushing back. No thought required. It poured out of my throat like an offering. A plea. A prayer. And it shocked me that I never saw it for what it was: a ritual meant to offer comfort to an insomniac infant, all of a sudden, made very clear.

The hymns had always been for me.

Before today, I hadn’t sung a hymn in years. In comparison to the length of my life, when hymns wrote the libretto to my first three Acts, that’s not that long.

I have heard ex-pats describe the feeling of returning to their country of origin after a long time away- and what it feels like to hear their mother tongue for the first time. They almost always cry. There is a sense of coming home in hearing their own language that runs deeper than even seeing their own family.

I have been on the outside walls of a church for nearly 9 years now. I have made my bed and my home in a new place. I have learned a new language. It’s a beautiful one. It is a life that fits. One I am proud to have survived in order to experience.

But today, Softly and Tenderly and Be Though My Vision and Come Thou Fount poured out of me like the water in the shower stall. It stunned me at first. And then, it made all the sense in the world.

Sometimes you just need to hear your own language.