In all my years of being a church musician, I have only missed one Sunday due to illness and I have never had to leave a service ill…until today. Toward the end of the sermon, I began having chest pains radiating up to my jaw (coupled with several days of intense tiredness–I’ve read enough to know that women don’t always present classic symptoms when having a heart attack). A wonderful Nurse Practitioner in my congregation took me to ER where no heart attack was immediately evident. They treated me for an anxiety attack as well as discharged me with instructions to schedule a stress test ASAP. “Chest pain of unknown origin.”

I felt frustrated and embarrassed leaving the second service to our brand new choir director who discovered he was also going to be organist about 10 minutes before it happened. We obviously have hired a very wonderful new staff member.

I have been struggling with why I let myself get so “wrapped up around the axle” over a couple of issues such that my body started to express the pain I obviously was not processing well in my mind and heart. I am exhausted tonight–still having the odd chest pain here and there–and am trying to listen to what God may be telling me about my mental focuses, the dark corners of my soul that need exposure to the one true Light, the lack of faith in God’s sovereign purposes in a few key areas. Lord, have mercy on me a sinner.

The other day, the Printery House sent out a supplement to their wonderful catelog. If you don’t receive one, contact them at All Saints Convent, P.O. Box 3127, Catonsville, MD 21228 (410) 747-4104.

One of their new offerings says the following and it is a great comfort to me tonight:

Intercessory prayer can penetrate the hearts of those we cannot open and shield those we cannot guard, and teach where we cannot speak and comfort where our hearts have no power to soothe. Prayer with its unseen hand, can enter where we may not.

I need to pray more and obsess less about injustices and other concerns. God help me to trust you to rectify unfair situations.