The Gospel Pool

I'm not always sure why a song takes hold of me. Sometimes the lyrics speak to my condition, sometimes the music speaks to my soul. Sometimes my rational mind can parse out the reason for the pull, and sometimes not. This is the song that has me this week:

Millbrook
How long, thou faithful God, shall I
Here in thy ways forgotten lie?
When shall the means of healing be
The channels of thy grace to me?

Sinners on every side step in,
And wash away their pain and sin;
But I, a helpless sinsick soul,
Still lie expiring at the pool.

Thou seest me lying at the pool
I would, thou know'st, I would be whole;
O let the troubled waters move,
And minister thy healing love.

Sometimes my heart just is frozen, and I am paralyzed with fear. I pray for an open heart at the same time that I am terrified that my prayer might be answered.
I was in a dither several times this week: I debated whether to organize a dinner for an singing friend from out of town, I debated and agonized over a letter to a Quaker friend, and everything has felt heavy. I want to be generous and loving and kind, and I also fear rejection. And did I mention I am an introvert? What introvert organizes a party, anyway?!*
Being a loner is something of a family tradition. I remember my Dad saying disdainfully once that we weren't "joiners," and my mother quoting her father as saying that you're lucky if you have two or three real friends in your life. For the majority of my life, I've shunned involvement in groups. Now I seem to be making up for lost time.
The gospel pool is for me the communities in which I've made my home: my Quaker meeting, my school, my shapenote singing group, my neighborhood, and all the friendships within those communities. It's through these connections that I find God's grace. Yet I'm often at the edge of that pool, unable to step in, feeling sharply that I am my mother's daughter. My mother died with a heart that would not melt. She died alone in the midst of friends and family who desperately wanted to ease her passage, but could not penetrate the walls she erected. When I can realize that I am once again at the edge of the pool, I look one way and see the path that would lead to a life and a death like hers. I look the other way, and it is unmapped, foreign territory. I have no pattern for living with an open heart, no internal compass to tell me the pitfalls and safe harbors of this terrain. Sometimes I just can't do it. I retreat. But often I tell the little worrying, nagging, sneering voices inside to hush, and I step into the pool.

*The party was lovely. I sent the letter. All is well.