The First Presbyterian Church of Titusville is on the Delaware River, not far from the spot where George Washington crossed on Christmas 1776.
It’s an historic old red-brick building with a white steeple and glass doors that look out on the water, but when I walked in there for the first time 20 years ago, I had no intention of joining the congregation. I was just looking for a piano.
It was a horrendous time in my life. My soon-to-be ex-wife and I were going through a contentious divorce, and I had to move out of the house on short notice, leaving our two kids and most of my things behind.
The only place I could find to live was a room above a friend’s garage. Legal bills consumed my assets and legal filings filled all my time. I could hardly concentrate on the small business I ran. Bitterness and fear crowded out all creativity.
What kept going through my head each day was my four-year-old daughter’s voice, saying, “When am I ever going to see Daddy?” Oh, how I missed being with her and her brother too.
I knew First Presbyterian and remembered somebody telling me they had a piano. Every time I drove past I yearned to go inside and play. At least I could lose myself for an hour or two in music.
I finally called. “This may sound odd, but I’m looking for a piano to play,” I told Pastor Bill Shaub, stumbling over my words.
“Come by the manse tonight,” Bill said. “I think we can help you out.”
I knocked on the door at nine o’clock on a summer’s eve, and was greeted by a white-haired gentleman. Bill had been the senior minister for 22 years and was an Army chaplain in Vietnam before that. “We’ve got three pianos over in the education building,” he told me. “Let me show you.”
We walked across the lawn in the twilight. He unlocked the door and flipped on the light. “They should be in tune,” he said, “especially that one.” He pointed to a piano, I later learned, that belonged to him.
Then he did something remarkable: He handed over the key to me, a perfect stranger. “Come by whenever you like.”
What an extraordinary thing. To be welcomed, trusted, made to feel at home. Night after night I sat at the keyboard and played: blues, classics, rock, carols.
Whenever I came to the old Isaac Watts hymn, “Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons away,” I thought of the Delaware and the passing of time. I desperately needed to recover my faith in God, “our help in ages past, our hope for years to come.”
Over the following months the church extended its welcome to me, just like Bill did. I was able to let go of my anger and to love again, to see my kids again. I even remarried. My wife and I became official members of First Presbyterian, and I joined the choir.
Not long ago, on a Christmas Eve, my now grown daughter, Roxanne, the one who once plaintively asked when she would ever see me again, sang a beautiful solo, raising the rafters in the old church.
It made me think of a holy night long ago when a minister who’d never met me handed me a key and said, “Come by whenever you like.” I came for the solace of music, and stayed.
Listen to Paul’s daughter, Roxanne, sing Still Her Little Child!
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