The Spirit Is in the Sappy

There I was, standing in the middle of a crowd on a beautiful summer evening, posing as a Goo Goo Dolls fan. It was a different world than I had inhabited in my past concert-going, but friends from church invited us, and who can pass up live music with friends? I was looking around, enjoying the people-watching and definitely digging how much personal space Goo Goo Dolls fans give each other… or maybe that’s just “Minnesota Nice.”

We enjoyed the concert more than I’d like to admit. I sang out the few lines I knew such as, “I want to wake up where you are, doodleedoo” (like my guitar impression?) and “Well there’s no time left for losers,” and “I won’t tell ’em your name,” which I always thought was, “I wanna know your name.” It was a good show, and I started to realize that the Goo Goo Dolls have more chops than I’d given them credit for. They are known for their sappy soft rock songs set to pretty acoustic guitar riffs, but I was surprised to see them rock pretty hard on some of them. It goes to show that you can’t judge a band by their one or two hits on the radio.

Throughout the concert, I noticed a young man who was probably in his 20’s or early 30’s to my left (like I said, I was enjoying the people-watching) who was very withdrawn within himself and probably had some special needs. He was standing with his hands close to his chest and very little emotion on his face. Every once in a while during the concert I would look over, and besides moving around a bit (not to the rhythm) within his personal space bubble, his body position and his face did not change much.

As they were wrapping up the concert, the crowd was cheering like crazy, and my husband said, “It’s not over… they haven’t played ‘Iris’ yet.” Some bands have a song that they can never not play or their audience would be seriously mad at them. For the Goo Goo Dolls, “Iris” is that song. Soon they came back on stage and started to play the familiar tune. The crowd was singing along. The final lyrics to that song are:

And I don’t want the world to see me
’Cause I don’t think that they’d understand
When everything’s made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am.

And of course, just to milk it, they sang a few extra “I just want you to know who I am”s. It was a beautiful ending to the show, but as I glanced over at the young man to my left, something even more beautiful was taking place: The young man’s father, who I had barely noticed, had his arms wrapped tightly around his son and was swaying to the rhythm and belting out in his son’s ear, “I just want you to know who I am, I just want you to know who I am,” over and over again. Tears filled my eyes as I took in the beauty of that moment. A song that I always wrote off as sappy was, here, a deep display of love with layers upon layers that I could never know.

The Spirit works in the most unexpected places.

The image of that father will forever be burned in my memory. It is a perfect picture of how God persistently holds us in his love. In our limitations, in our stubbornness, and even in our rebelliousness, God is that father who wraps his arms around us and sings loudly in our ear, “I just want you to know who I am.” This is the message he is sending all throughout his Word. In the burning bush, he sings, “I just want you to know who I am.” In the wrestling with Jacob and resulting hip pain, he sings, “I just want you to know who I am.” In the raising of Lazarus when Jesus says to his Father, “I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me (Jn 11:42),” God is singing, “I just want you to know who I am.” And finally from the cross, God shows just how far he will go to express to you…

“I just want you to know who I am.”