Where can I turn for peace?

"He, only one."

Do you know the story of the hymn Where Can I Turn for Peace?

Here are two versions of the story as shared by Emma Lou Thayne, who wrote the lyrics, and Jolene Meredith, who composed the music:

In 1971, while Emma Lou Thayne was serving on the Young Women’s General Board with Jolene Meredith, they were asked to write a closing musical number for a June conference Young Women’s presentation. That assignment resulted in the creation of “Where Can I Turn for Peace?” But Emma Lou says, “The words to the hymn came for me out of a troubled time for our family. We had one daughter ill, I was facing a spinal fusion and interruption of teaching mid-quarter at the University of Utah. My husband was about to become bishop of a student ward, and 4 daughters were under the age of 17 with busy lives. ‘Pray at night, plan in the morning’ had been the byword of our family. Now it became ‘Pray all the time.’

14 years later in 1985, when the new LDS Hymnbook was published, that hymn was included. In 1986, just months after the hymn’s publication, a crowbar came through the windshield of the car in which Emma Lou was riding and hit her in the face, nearly killing her and resulting in extensive surgery to her eye and face and leaving her unable to read or raise her head for 7 months. During that trial, Emma Lou said, “In this time, when reading and writing have not been part of my life, I have come to hear some inner music that is often prompted by the very searching that this hymn talks of. I am grateful for the unbelievably timely resurrection of the song that has helped me so much in my own recent resurrection, a resurrection of what I might never have known without the trial and without the granted grace of the impulse to reach.”

Emma Lou Thayne

In 1971, Jolene and Emma Lou were asked to write a musical number for the Laurel workshop at June conference. Emma Lou telephoned Jolene to discuss the assignment. Jolene says, “I happened to be in the music room of our home at the time. Sister Thayne says she had been thinking of a message of hope and peace as the hymn’s theme. As she began to relate some of the beginning lyrics, I stepped to the piano and said, ‘Sounds good. The music should go something like this.’ She said, ‘Good,’ and gave me another line. I responded with additional measures of music. Before the conversation ended, we had mostly roughed in the basic hymn.

“We have lovingly spoken of this number as ‘the telephone hymn’ throughout the years. But Jolene also says, ‘We determined this was a mental illness hymn. Emma Lou Thayne, who wrote the beautiful words to the hymn, was struggling with the mental illness of one of her daughters at the time this was written, and I was struggling myself personally with mental illness. And so we lovingly call it “The Mental Illness Hymn.” Our family has seven traceable generations of mental illness. These include chemical depression, generalized anxiety disorders such as agoraphobia, obsessive-compulsive, and panic disorder.” Jolene, who says that the mentally ill struggle often in vain to find any internal peace, particularly loves the words of the second verse: “Where, when my aching grows, where when I languish, where in my need to know, where can I run? Where is the quiet hand to calm my anguish? Who, who can understand? He, only One.”

Jolene Meredith

http://broadcast.lds.org/ldsradio/pdf/history-of-hymns/history-of-hymns-ep-18.pdf

I am sorrowing over the sorrow of others. Those who are grieving over the death of a loved one. Those who’ve been facing difficult financial situations through no fault of their own and who are wondering when things are going to turn. People who are sick and who have been sick for a while now. And so many who are lonely, afraid, tired, discouraged, and in some cases, all the above.

I remember a moment when I was a missionary and had a companion who struggled with chronic illness, which ultimately led to him returning home early. I naively told my mission president that I wished I could trade places with my companion and take his illness on myself.

I’m sure he was smiling inside as he listened to me. He wisely reminded me that such a thing was not the plan; that we are each here to have a personalized, mortal experience, and that all wrongs would be made right through the Savior’s atoning sacrifice.

So, rather than wish those I love could be spared suffering (though I will still wish and hope that for you,) I should also do all I can to succor them as Jesus would and pray that angels will be sent to console them.

No matter what you are going through, friend, you need not go through it alone. Perhaps some of the saddest moments I’ve experienced in trying to help broken brothers and sisters to mend is to hear them say they know that Jesus is the Savior, but they don’t believe He can save them.

“I’ve just made too many mistakes.”

“I’m not worthy of His suffering.”

“I’m too flawed. I’ve tried to change but nothing works.”

If I were standing in front of you right now, and you were feeling or thinking similar things, I would take your hands in mine and try with all my soul to help you feel what is true. To somehow see His love for you in my eyes and hear His love for you in my voice.

You are a precious child of God. Your importance to the Savior is incalculable. His Atonement was for you - is for you - just as much as it was for me and everyone else.

As you read the words to Where Can I Turn for Peace and if you choose to watch the video below, listen. Not just to what is being sung, but to the Voice beneath the words. It is His voice, the Prince of Peace. He can help you. He will help you. “Constant he is and kind, Love without end.”

Where can I turn for peace?
Where is my solace
When other sources cease to make me whole?
When with a wounded heart, anger or malice,
I draw myself apart, Searching my soul?

Where, when my aching grows,
Where, when I languish,
Where, in my need to know, where can I run?
Where is the quiet hand to calm my anguish?
Who, who can understand?
He, only One.

He answers privately,
Reaches my reaching In my Gethsemane, Savior and Friend.
Gentle the peace he finds for my beseeching.
Constant he is and kind, Love without end.
Constant he is and kind, Love without end.