Last week my sister came through town and stopped by our home for dinner before continuing on her journey. She came bearing gifts and mine was the newly released Johnny Cash CD "Out Among the Stars."
The liner notes from John Carter Cash included the following: "It is somewhat lesser known but Dad relapsed into pain pill addiction around 1980. It was a few years later in the last half of 1983 that he found recovery. . . . When I heard these recordings for the first time in so many years what I immediately noticed was the joy in his voice - his spirit was soaring. I heard the vibrant joy."
 There it is. Everyone is in pain. Joy is possible.If you scratch below the surface of anyone's life you will find pain. No one - whatever the appearances - has the perfect life. We walk different paths and we often think that someone else's path is preferable to the one we've chosen or been called to trod.
That's why I'm drawn to music with meaningful lyrics. It captures our attempts to navigate the pain and to experience the joy.
For Cash the source of joy was the love of his life, June Carter Cash, and his faith - sources to which I relate (meaning my wife and Jesus, not June Carter Cash).
And so we come to a highlight of Out Among the Stars, "I Came to Believe." One of two Cash-penned pieces on the album, it captures this tension between pain and joy:
I couldn't manage the problems I brought on myself
And it just made it worse when I laid them on somebody else
So I finally surrendered it all, brought down in despair
I cried out for help and I felt a warm comforter there
Nothing worked out when I handled it all on my own
And each time I failed it made me feel twice as alone
Then I thought, "Lord, there must be a surer and easier way
For it just cannot be that a man should lose hope every day."
And I came to believe in a power much higher than I
I came to believe that I needed help to get by
In childlike faith I gave in and gave him a try
And I came to believe in a power much higher than I
Our challenge within our families? Not to deny the pain that is real and to celebrate the joy that can be just as real. To recognize that music and writing (or any form of human communication really) can capture moments on the journey, but that we cannot live another's journey nor can we offer our journey to another. We are to encourage and love one another along the path and to hope and pray that each person finds the available measure of joy amidst the pain.
So then whether you like country music or Johnny Cash, when you hear "I Came to Believe," you hear the heart of a fellow traveler.
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