How can a song make you cry and sing at the same time?
There have been many moments in my life when lyrics in songs speak to me when I have no other way of expressing myself. A few months ago, the Sunday after we found out about our miracle to be exact, this song was sung as the closing hymn. It was a different version, a little more upbeat with a gospel flair a la our parish, but the words remain the same.
The juxtaposition of the desolate lyrics filled with pain and strife combined with the refrain, How can I keep from singing? is almost haunting in this version. It feels like a will of the heart almost, one of those rhetorical questions that you say to make yourself believe, rather than saying it because you believe. I cried that whole exit procession that day at mass. How can I keep from singing? Oh, I’ll tell how you how I’ve kept and been darn good at keeping from singing. I was getting really good at keeping from singing, for in my immediate scope, nothing was worth singing about. But then that day, that amazing day I had the best news in the world and everything horrible in the world equally melted around me the day I could sing and sing and sing, I realized my fickleness. I cried as I tried to sing about how all I wanted to do was sing. Oh the irony. Because even then, it wasn’t true, I felt so guilty that I couldn’t sing before and it was only then in my moment I’d waited for for so long.
How I wish I could be simple and faithful and true and really live the words of this song.
No storm can shake my inmost calm, while to that rock I’m clinging
Its sounds an echo in my soul, how can I keep from singing?
