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Last month, another family requested I play "It Is Well with My Soul" for their loved one’s funeral.

After nearly 50 years of playing the piano for funeral services, I've lost count of how many times I've played that hymn.

The sorrows like sea billows are a given. They arrive for all of us eventually. The question is not whether suffering comes. The question is what we have been taught to do when it arrives.

Those years at the piano have provided an unusual vantage point. Most people attending a funeral spend the service looking toward the front of the sanctuary or chapel. They see the pastor, the flowers, the family, and the casket. Sitting at the piano, however, I've spent much of my life looking in the opposite direction.

I see the faces. I've watched businessmen, ranchers, physicians, pastors, politicians, mechanics, celebrities, schoolteachers, and grieving children. I've seen estranged family members share a pew for an hour. I've seen old wounds temporarily set aside. I've watched tears fall from people who spent a lifetime convincing the world they didn't cry.

It's hard to lie during a funeral service. The face and eyes give it away.

For a brief moment, the distractions of life are suspended in the face of death. Everyone in the room is confronted with the same reality: Life is fragile, time is limited, and something had the final word over a life that may have loomed very large only days before.

When I offer to help select the music, I often ask the family’s favorite hymn. “It Is Well with My Soul” almost invariably stands out.

This year marks 150 years since Philip Bliss set Horatio Spafford's words to music. Ever since, grieving families have continued reaching for that hymn.

After hearing it and performing it for a lifetime, I've become convinced that something happens in the fifth measure where the word "sorrows" lands on the first minor chord of the hymn.

I leave room for that chord.

When I play the hymn, I take my time. I've had music ministers try to conduct me faster through it. I politely ignore them. Grief does not benefit from haste.

Not because I am trying to showcase the music, but because I have watched what happens in the room when people hear it. Heads lower. Shoulders sag. Eyes fill with tears. In that moment, the hymn permits grieving people to tell the truth.

The sea billows are rolling.

RELATED: What we lose when we rush past pain

iStock/Getty Images

Sometimes, when I invite the congregation to sing, I watch people exhale. Some simply mouth the words. Others sing through tears. Some stand motionless and stare straight ahead. I've watched grieving fathers, mothers, and spouses raise their hands heavenward as tears run down their faces.

Occasionally, I stop playing altogether on the last chorus and let the congregation carry the hymn themselves. There is something profound about hearing a room full of grieving people give collective grief a collective voice.

The hymn was written from within great sorrow. It never hurries people through it. It doesn't offer clichés or pretend pain isn't pain.

It acknowledges sorrow while refusing to grant it the final word.

Then comes the line that has occupied my thoughts more than any other: “Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say ...”

Taught me.

The sorrows like sea billows are a given. They arrive for all of us eventually. The question is not whether suffering comes. The question is what we have been taught to do when it arrives.

What do we reach for when things around us feel so unsteady?

I've played this hymn for people who sang it with confidence and for people who could barely get the words out. I've watched some sing it as testimony and others sing it as prayer. Some seemed to embody it. Others seemed to aspire to it.

Yet, the requests keep arriving.

After nearly 50 years at the piano bench, I've never lost my sense of wonder at what happens when a room full of grieving people stand together and sing: It is well with my soul.

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While the transgender movement has lost significant ground culturally and politically in recent years, it’s still probing for vulnerabilities — especially during Pride Month.

In a recent interview with women’s sports advocate and founder of XX-XY Athletics Jennifer Sey, Steve Deace highlighted a recent example: In California high school track and field, biological male athlete AB Hernandez (who identifies as transgender) has dominated the girls’ high jump and triple jump at state championships, leading to a California Interscholastic Federation policy where displaced biological girls are forced to share the top podium spot and co-champion status with him.

“You're on the front lines of this battle. What do you think?” Deace asked Sey.

Sey believes that the transgender agenda has been “pushed back,” but it’s far from being defeated.

She explains that while 27 states currently have laws keeping women's sports for biological females only, a pending Supreme Court decision this June will determine if those protections are constitutional. She expects the court to uphold them, but emphasizes that this victory would only apply to those 27 states. The remaining 23 states, which prioritize gender identity over biological sex, would still allow biological males to compete in girls' sports.

In other words, even a favorable ruling from SCOTUS doesn't end the fight nationwide.

“So we still have a ton of work to do,” she says.

That work, she argues, needs to focus on “[changing] the culture.”

“Seventy to 80% of Americans agree ... that women's sports should be for women ... but I don't think we've made meaningful progress in getting that 80% to stand up and say what they believe,” says Sey.

“All right, so how do we do that?” Deace asks.

As for her, Sey plans to “keep producing content, keep encouraging people to stand up and say what they think, to stand up and say the most commonsense thing that there is, which is that men and women are different.”

With every person who speaks this truth, the stronger the “permission structure” becomes in the broader culture, she argues.

“Yes, we need legislation. We need state legislation; we need national legislation to reify Title IX. But I think when we win the cultural battle is when we actually win,” she tells Deace.

He agrees and reiterates the need for people to have enough courage to endure public shaming if necessary — especially “dads at school board meetings” and “young women [willing] to say, ‘I refuse to take part in this charade.’”

Sey agrees that men specifically need to join the movement. “We need way more men in this fight. ... We need moms to do it too, but dads have been particularly absent in this fight.”

While she agrees that young female athletes should take a stand for their own rights, she is unwilling to ask them to forgo competing in order to make a statement.

“How do I tell a 14-year-old girl that she needs to do it when a professional athlete with all the money in the world won't do it because she’s afraid of losing endorsements?” she asks.

“These [professional athletes] are women with enough power and enough influence, and they pull enough dollars in for these brands that I'd be willing to bet that the brands won't fire them,” Sey continues.

“I want to put the pressure on them more than these 14-year-old girls. They're the leaders.”

To hear more, watch the episode above.

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The post Report: Iran Mined and Collapsed Access Tunnels at Bombed Nuclear Site to Block Access to Enriched-Uranium Stockpile appeared first on Breitbart.