Her music has a way of transcending my pain
By MARY COLBORN
Port Orchard Independent Independent Columnist
Jan 29 2009, 1:05 PM · UPDATED
Synchronicity is defined as, “a coincidence of events that seem to be meaningfully related.”
In the class I’m taking with a group in Poulsbo on “The Artist’s Way,” a 12-week course designed to unlock your creative potential through spiritual examination and practices, it is defined as “a fortuitous intermeshing of events.”
The course examines situation after situation in which the right person or opportunity arrives just as you need him, her or it — as long as you stay open.
Even if you don’t, it seems as if the powerful force of synchronicity will not be denied.
We try, though, don’t we?
I resisted Jeryl Kay Struble’s seeming intrusion into my life with as much will as possible. I sat in front of her in church for years and never noticed her or attempted to meet her.
I had chosen that particular church carefully to stay anonymous – no teaching of Sunday school for me, no organizing of food drives, no serving on the parish council and no concern for the lives of other members.
If I could avoid the politics and the people, I could avoid the pain.
I know, not exactly churchlike thoughts. But my last church experience left me sufficiently traumatized.
Then when I met Jeryl at an unrelated community gathering and she mentioned that she had not only noticed me, but gave thought to who I was, thinking that we could be sisters.
I was unnerved. When she handed me a CD of original music, 16 songs she wrote and recorded, I complained.
“This woman wants me to listen to songs she wrote about hope and healing,” I told a close friend.
“Then listen. Don’t dismiss her and her work,” answered my friend, who claims to be “a wise old sage” and have wisdom beyond parallel.
Now, I have never sat through an entire CD in my life. I’m always up and moving. (I never sit through movies, either, because, well, that’s license to sleep.)
But, with Jeryl’s music, we did, sitting motionless and mesmerized while her entire repertoire played.
As I sit here and try to describe it, I cannot find the words.
Her vocals were skilled and polished and her voice pure.
Her gifts are evident. That much is true and easy to say.
The melodies and choruses lifted and surprised, but it was the place that the songs took you that defies description.
It was the feeling they left inside of you that knows no parallel. I only know that when I heard the songs, I was sure that they should be on the radio and that thousands of people should be listening to her work.
The rest, I can’t explain. I can’t explain why I went back to that particular church service recently just to see her. (And, ask to buy copies.)
Nor can I explain why she said that she prayed I would be there.
Nor do I have an explanation for why you are sitting here today reading her story. I only know that when I sat down to speak with her about her work, she shared episodes of pain that rivaled and eclipsed my own.
As I struggle with the South Kitsap School District levy question – do I vote no and send an important message or vote yes “for the kids” – she shared that she had endured church and traumatic teaching experiences that were every bit as painful as my own.
She transcended them, though, pouring all her pain, grief, anguish and despair into a work that is so beautiful it transcends description.
While I speak to her outside of church, the people coming up to greet her seem to agree.
“I listened to your CD over and over,” one woman said. “It’s exquisite.”
“Without my music, I wouldn’t have been able to heal as I have,” Jeryl explained. “Every song relates to an experience. My hope is that with this music I can make a difference.”
My sense is that she will.
The song, “You are the Great I am,” she wrote when she felt “far away from God,” when incidents of childhood abuse bubbled to the surface and demanded attention.
As the psychology major with a master’s degree in teaching and another in linguistics listened to the original work by another singer, she thought for the first time, “Could I write a song?”
She did, finishing the song within an hour. She was surprised by its reception.
“People loved it and asked for it over and over,” Jeryl said. “It is as if healing energy went into creating it. I can’t explain how or why.”
Her song, “It’s Raining,” one of my favorites, has that effect as well.
Its history is as fascinating as it is sad. After a year spent teaching at a Kentucky boarding school, Jeryl returned to study at the University of Washington and stumbled into a Russian history class.
The professor pleaded with the Jeryl and a fellow student to “study Russian,” so he wouldn’t have to cancel the class that was being held for just the two.
She did, teaching herself the basics of Russian “over the Christmas holidays.”
She went on to work as a translator for World Relief, “the best job imaginable,” and taught Russian for 14 years with the Bellevue Community College. Her aide throughout that time was a young man, Andre Kobets, who contracted a brain tumor he attributed to his exposure to the Cherynobyl nuclear explosion.
His death hit Jeryl hard.
“His wife and I were just bawling on the phone together one day,” Jeryl said, “and I noticed that it was raining outside. It seemed as if God was crying along with us.”
The words in the song, “You were so kind, always thinking of the other and rarely of yourself ... and you had to go and leave us so soon,” followed by the chorus, “It’s raining in my heart tonight and its pouring down outside, I can’t believe you are really gone ... When I hear the rain I know that my God’s right here crying with me,” resonates with anyone who has ever mourned.
Jeryl couldn’t have completed the CD without the loving support of so many, including her husband and children who “listened to every song over and over,” her brother, David Bangs, a retired Microsoft software engineer-turned-philanthropist, the friend, Becky Rekow, who inspired another of my favorite songs on the CD, “You Saw Me with God’s Eyes,” and Gil Yslas, who engineered the CD and performed the instrumentals.
“He saw me through two years worth of work and healing,” Jeryl said.
You can find information on Jeryl and her work, including the CD Journey to Joy at: http://cdbaby.com/cd/jerylkay or e-mail her at jeryl2006@bangsfamily.net.
Mary Colborn is a Port Orchard resident.
http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/kitsap/poi/opinion/38632739.html
Biography
by Jeryl Struble
I’ve been singing ever since I can remember, but for so long it was OTHER PEOPLE’S songs. I never dreamed the day would come when I would write my own! But it did, and that’s what is on Journey to Joy. Sixteen of my OWN songs and I am singing them all!
But how did I get here? Born in Seattle, I was the oldest which must be why I am so bossy. I ended up with two brilliant younger brothers, John and David and a half sister, Tiffany.
I was “on stage early”. When I was a young girl my Grandma Ginny bought me a little piano and my mother taught me to sing hundreds of songs. Evidently, I was quite the little entertainer when guests would come to see us. My mom had a piano before I was born, but they had to sell it to put my Dad through law school.
When I was four, he got her a new one! I can still remember how she cried. She later gave lessons to kids around the area. My Mom entered me in the Seafair Princess pageant in Seattle when I was eight years old by sending in my picture. If I didn’t win, she was afraid I’d feel bad and she didn’t want that. But I DID win and with the other three members of the Seafair Royalty I got to meet Danny Kaye. We even had our picture in the newspaper with him! I was thrilled beyond belief that they got my age wrong and listed me as NINE years old. Today, the same kind of mistake would not be so welcome to me.
That same year, I started piano lessons with a very distinguished older man, Mr. Woody. He would tell me sharply to lift my wrists and that I didn’t practice enough. I just didn’t like the songs he was choosing. Finally, my mother let me quit and taught me to play herself. She was a piano teacher but thought that perhaps I wouldn’t listen to her since I was … well rather obstinate. She even taught me to play the Partridge Family and Archie’s Here songs. I was in heaven. Mom tells me that I had an excellent memory and could recite whole television episodes from Gilligan’s Island by heart. For refraining from doing so, I used to earn 25 cents an hour on vacations.
When I was about ten, Grandma Ginny went to Hawaii and brought me back my own ukulele, and she taught me a few chords. I quickly learned to play “Rock a My Soul” and had a great time with it. My mother, Laurel Redecker, who plays the organ, took all three of us kids to perform at her Organ Guild concerts: I was on the ukulele, my brother, John, on the guitar and little David played the tambourine. When I was in seventh grade, I got a drum for Christmas. My favorite thing was to sit in the living room in my peace-sign pants and "too short" bangs like Karen Carpenter and singing Close to You and We’ve Only Just Begun. Her music influenced me a lot, and I’ve been told that I sound something like her. The fact that I spent literally hundreds of hours singing with her as a child could be why. I was devastated when Karen passed away at such a young age.
I also lost my biggest hero, my Dad, Jerry Bangs, when I was seventeen. He was so full of life and only 42 years old. When I was a child, I’d go to sleep hearing my mother on the piano and the sound of Dad’s hydro engines revving in the garage. We knew that racing unlimited hydroplanes was very dangerous, but it was something he loved to do.
I’ll never forget that day when I came home and watched them say he had been killed in the Seafair races…they showed his picture. That was before they would notify the family first. I remember when he used to scare me taking me up in his Cessna and going upsidedown…and once he took us all the way to Disneyland. Never a dull moment with my father. Thanks to him, I was able to go to college.
While studying for my bachelor’s in Psychology at Seattle Pacific University, I was so excited to be accepted into a group of singers called “Manna.” We would tour around Washington State to various churches, and once we got to fly to Colorado to the Estes Park convention for young artists! There I met Kathy Lee Johnson, who was soon to become famous as Kathy Lee Gifford. I still have the picture. In my twenties, I entered the Miss Northshore Pageant and won the talent award singing “We’ve Only Just Begun.” It was so exciting being a “princess” again and supporting the Northshore area in Bothell, Washington where I had graduated from High School.
The next year I was a runner up again with “In a Little While,” an Amy Grant tune. I did get a band together around that time and we sang at a local restaurant called “The Dove Sign.” Not long after the pageants, I went away to teach at a boarding school in Kentucky and this was before I got my teaching certificate. I thought I would like to be “Christy” but found out it was NOTHING like the television show and came home after a year and went back to college. I majored in Russian Linguistics and got my Master’s Degree. It was there that I met my husband, Bob who was finishing his teacher’s credential. He often calls me his “little song bird.”
For our honeymoon we toured all over Europe. We DID go to Russia in those days of the Iron Curtain, and we had all kinds of adventures in places like London, Paris, Istanbul and Moscow. Then we moved to Bremerton, WA where my husband, Bob, taught History. We had three beautiful children , Katie, Daniel and Michael. I worked as an interpreter for Russian refugees at World Relief before settling in to teaching Russian at Bellevue Community College for 13 years. It was a nice job for me because it was part-time and left lots of space for the kids. As for singing? Well, that kind of got put on the backburner for awhile except for occasional weddings and funerals. I did learn to play the mandolin and went to lots of Bluegrass Concerts as a family. It was my husband’s favorite music and he got my daughter singing in all the contests.
After my husband's retirement, I went back to school and got my teacher's credential and my Masters in Education from Old Dominion University. For this period, studying WAS my life.
About four years ago, I had some real challenges in my life and it was during that time that I started to write songs. I was inspired by Stephan Plummer, because she was MY AGE and had just finished her first CD. I went home right after hearing her perform and wrote You Are the Great I Am. I started performing it in churches not long after that. Before a couple of years had past, I had over twenty songs. Then I met Gil Yslas, a wonderful musician who had made many CDs. He agreed to be my producer, and now ,two years later, we have finished! Each song has a special story and comes from my life or someone close to me. For example, just last year, Andre Kobets, 35, a Ukrainian man who had been my volunteer aide when I was teaching Russian passed away from the cancer he contracted in Kiev, at the age of 14, during the Cherobyl nuclear accident. This is when I wrote It’s Raining. When I find myself wishing that something could be different, I just thank God that all of my experiences together have made me who I am today. I am very grateful for my life and want to share what I have learned with others through music! I pray that my journey will be a blessing to you.
At this time, I am doing performances locally and teaching elementary school as a substitute. I am really looking forward to doing a lot with my Music. Indeed my own life has been a Journey to Joy.
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