Everything’s Going to Be Okay

So I’ve been reading—and loving—The Izquierdo Family, a multi-generational family epic by Rubén Degollado. The book is about a family curse, but what delights me is that Degollado uses the story of that one curse to show us dozens of blessings, acts of kindness, graces. The Izquierdos are affectionate, gutsy, and sometimes crude, but always fully invested in their efforts to help one another.

One of my favorite passages so far is in the chapter titled “La Milagrosa Selena.” In it, a woman talks about her Comadre Marisol, and how she’s been suffering with an unusual eating disorder: she sleep-eats industrial quantities every night. In an effort to help, this comadre turns to the music of beloved Tex-Mex star Selena Quintanilla. Here’s an excerpt:

I bought Comadre Marisol a CD Walkman so she could listen to the music of Selena, because sometimes healing happens quickly and sometimes it happens over time Every night, Comadre Marisol puts on her headphones. Selena’s music comes to her as she falls asleep as if through the cosmos all the way from heaven, and she never gets up in the middle of the night to eat all that food. She doesn’t need to because La Milagrosa Selena’s music fills the emptiness inside of her. Selena visits Comadre Marisol in that magic place between sleeping and being awake and sings, “Everything’s going to be okay.” Selena does this and Comadre Marisol knows that all her problems are so small compared to Selena’s love, to the everlasting reach of Selena’s songs.

Degollado gets it! Music has so much power to heal, it feels like a god reaching into your life and making it alright. In the end, this is what drove me to write songs. As a young boy in Guatemala, living in a difficult household, each song I loved was a three-minute guarantee of safety and joy. Cat Stevens and Juan Luis Guerra were my Milagrosos, soothing me when no one else quite could. And for that, I’m grateful. But gratitude isn’t all. So many people can say thanks for a beautiful song, but what Degollado did here goes beyond that. There’s reverence in it. There’s worship. And I hadn’t considered that.