Okay … confession … while I was at the Festival of Homiletics (that’s a fancy word for preaching a sermon) in Nashville I snuck out one night and went to the The Grand Ole Opry. I was in Nashville and a friend at the Festival had an extra FREEE ticket – how could I say no?!?! It was a great night and a wonderful evening of entertainment even though I don’t follow country music.
One of the entertainers of the evening was Collin Raye. Raye’s style would best be described as country pop ballads and he is known for addressing social issues. Several of his songs have religious themes. He closed his set that night (each entertainer got to do three songs) with a ballad that he wrote to honour his first-born grandchild, Haley. Haley began her life like any healthy infant but she developed a neurological disorder that the best doctors in the country could not diagnose. The family sought help every where as they watched their beautiful little girl suffer and struggle before their eyes. Raye spoke of this that evening before he sang the song “She’s With Me”. On watching his granddaughter he said, “She was totally alert and aware, but could do nothing. Her cerebellum was just basically being eaten away. It was just brutal, it just got worse and worse and worse. She she was so beautiful and courageous.”
His granddaughter’s courage and suffering inspired Raye to write this powerfully inspirational song. In an interview he said “I wrote that song on an airplane while she was alive, about a year before she passed away, as a tribute to her, just trying to describe the overwhelming joy-slash-sorrow that comes with having a child like that that you love so much that you cannot do anything for,” said Raye. “It was a celebration of her life.” Raye told us that it has become an anthem of sorts for parents of children with challenges.
In the last verse of “She’s With Me,” Raye, a Catholic convert, imagines himself in heaven standing before God, ready to be judged as an imperfect human being. “Lord, you have your ways, this I pray/On the day I stand before you, she’ll stand right by my side/When you look upon me, head hung down in shame/I’ll feel the blame, she’ll look at me/And then she’ll speak, in that precious voice/Don’t worry ‘bout him my Lord, ‘cause you see/He’s with me.”
The song is unabashedly autobiographical and it is a tear-jerker. Don’t listen to it in public unless you want to people to see you crying!
It also raises theological questions … what do you believe about the end of the this life and the beginning of the next? Do you believe in a next life? How about judgement? Renewing relationships with family? Do you hope for reunion in an after-life?
