The wedding that I partnered to play prelude songs with was July 11 (a few weekends ago). I was so very honored to play at the ceremony. It was, of course, tons of fun (the wedding , the celebrations and the playing)!

Yohanna and her family are Eritrean. People with an Eritrean cultural background sure know how to celebrate! In Eritrea, wedding celebrations occur for days, literally! Because this wedding was a joining of two cultures (Dutch-Canadian and Eritrean-Canadian), intentional effort was made to include both cultures. For example, we witnessed a really wonderful Eritrean tradition in which a blanket was given to the groom to make the home of Yohanna and Brendan, a warm and welcoming place. At the reception, half an hour of Canadian/English music and then a half hour of Eritrean music was played. I found the joining of the two cultures in this covenant of marriage with prayers and scriptures in both English and Tigrinya to be moving and beautiful!

In case you were curious, the playing went quite well. It is an extra challenge to play with someone else. You both need to count (ex. 1 and, 2 and, 3 and, 4 and) the song carefully to ensure the other person can follow where you are located in the music. Jessica and I practiced together frequently so that we could ensure a lovely prelude for the wedding ceremony. Our prelude song-list combined both classical pieces (Bach/Beethoven/Handel) and praise songs:

1. Prelude (No.1 in Well-Tempered Clavier) by Johann Sebastian Bach
2. Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring by Johann Sebastian Bach
3. Fur Elise by Ludwig van Beethoven
4. Air on a G-String by George Fredrich Handel (from Handel’s Water Music)
5. O Love That Will Not Let Me Go by Indelible Grace/Christopher Miner
6. Psalm 25 by The Psalm Project
7. Sing To The Lord by Matt Crocker and Mike Guglielmucci (more commonly known by Chris Tomlin)

It was an utter joy for Jessica and I to give these songs to Yohanna and Brendan for their wedding ceremony! So, a big thank you to Brendan and Yohanna for asking me to play (when, I fear, I had little faith in my left hand) and to my dear friend Jessica.

"It was a wonderful place, this Ezenzeleni. For here the blind, that dragged out their days in a world they could not see, here they had eyes given to them. Here they made things that he for all his sight could never make. Baskets stout and strong, in osiers of different colours, coming together in patterns, the red with the red the blue with the blue, under the seeing and sightless hands. He talked with the people, and the blind eyes glowed with something that could only have been fire in the soul. It was white men who did this work of mercy, and some of them spoke English and some spoke Afrikaans. Yes, those who spoke English and those who spoke Afrikaans came together to open the eyes of black men that were blind."(1.13.29) I love this passage from Alan Paton’s “Cry, the Beloved Country” because it seems to connect so meaningfully with my life, at present. For those who have not read “Cry, the Beloved Country,” it is a novel that follows a Zulu pastor’s journey to Johannesburg. It takes place in the mid 1940’s when South Africa’s social structures were setting the stage for apartheid. In this scene, Stephen Kamalo (the Zulu pastor) visits a place called Ezenleni, where blind black men, who at that time would have no hope of making a living for themselves, would partner with white South Africans to make baskets. Blind, black South Africans were joining together with seeing white South Africans to make something beautiful together. I find this passage connects well with certain portions of my life. Currently, I am working hard to recover what I have lost in my car accident (March 16, 2014). In general, there is a lot of partnering that needs to occur as I recover. Of course, I need to partner with my many therapists to do what I would be unable to do alone (or not do well alone). That partnering takes by far most of my time. More specifically, I want to note that special something which makes my eyes glow “with what can only be fire in the soul.” For me, that thing is playing piano, something I have always thoroughly enjoyed. My accident, of course, has left me with only one side of my body working as it normally would. I am unable to get my left hand and leg to cooperate as well as my right hand and leg do. Because of this one-sided weakness, it means that playing piano has become a unique challenge. Normally, one plays piano with two hands (left and right) but for me, my left hand is less responsive. Thankfully, my right hand works just as it did previously, pre-accident. Last August, whilst I was still in the hospital, my newly engaged friends, Yohanna and Brendan, asked me to play at their wedding ceremony, regardless of whatever the future state of my left hand (a request I found to be quite beautiful). So now, as the wedding date approaches my dear friend Jessica wonderfully has agreed to partner with me to create what we hope will be beautiful music. She will play the left hand and I the right. It has been an exceptional joy for me to get together and practice with her. I am delighted at the prospect of playing with Jessica at the wedding. So, what is the thing that makes your eyes glow with fire in the soul? I would encourage you to seek and discern what that thing is for your life is because discovering that will inspire and enliven your daily living. Here is a link to one of the songs we hope to play together (only piano of course): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS3o_160OhE. I find the ending lyrics of this song particularly moving: “O Joy that seekest me through pain, I cannot close my heart to thee; I trace the rainbow through the rain, and feel the promise is not vain, that morn shall tearless be!” I concur with those words wholeheartedly!

My name is Jenica Groot-Nibbelink. On March 16, 2014, after preaching a sermon* at Westmount Christian Reformed Church in Strathroy, Ontario, I was in a serious car accident and sustained several life-threatening injuries. I was rushed to Strathroy Hospital, intubated and then flown by air ambulance to London, Ontario’s Victoria Hospital’s Critical Care Trauma Centre. On April 23, I was transferred across the street to Parkwood Institute’s Complex Care Unit. By early June, I was moved up to Parkwood’s Acquired Brain Injury Inpatient Unit. After almost three months on this unit, I was discharged from Parkwood Institute on August 29, 2014. All in all, I spent six months in hospital. Since then, with the help of a fabulous rehab team (which includes my family), I have been working extremely hard at my recovery. I’ve had to re-learn quite a number of things such as swallowing, proper breathing, speaking, and walking. A variety of therapists continue to lead me in leg, arm, hand, voice, and cognitive exercises. It has been quite a journey and yet remarkably, I would say I live a wildly and beautifully blessed life. I invite you to follow this blog as I record thoughts along my recovery journey, even as I begin writing now, more than a year later. The blog title is: Involuntary Conversion. Involuntary because this is a path I did not choose and never expected my life to take. After my two-year campus ministry internship, I was planning to head to Calvin Theological Seminary and then, likely, a life in full-time ministry. Conversion because of the language link between rehabilitation, speech language pathology and conversion and, of course, because of its theological overtones. You will notice a semi-regular blog post from my father who is, himself, a local London pastor (and, often, my prime editor). You can listen to this sermon at: http://www.westmountcrc.ca/linked/S20140316.mp3.