Only The Lonely

Only the Lonely

As a child, Pyotr Ilyich dreaded rejection. His domineering mother repeatedly warned her insecure child that God would turn his back on Pyotr if he wasn’t a good little boy! As hard as he tried, Pyotr was too much of a free spirit to please his stern parents. Despite the fact that he was a musical prodigy, his parents insisted that he train for a safe career in the civil service. When he decided to enroll in the music conservatory, his father refused to forgive him. His parents’ rejection would twist his soul and unleash his manic genius.

Within a few years, Pyotr was composing music for the ages. Yet critics declared it too romantic, musicians deemed it shallow, and highbrows dismissed it as sentimental. That chorus of criticism plunged him into despair. But common folk flocked to his concerts, making him a superstar. His king proudly proclaimed him a national treasure. He should have been happy with those accolades, but Pyotr invariably allowed a single criticism to cancel out a thousand compliments. Years of rejection had so shattered his psyche that he was constantly suicidal.

A deep secret caused him his greatest anguish. Pyotr was a closet homosexual. If the truth ever got out, he would be ruined. So he tried to suppress his feelings by getting married. But his new wife was like his disapproving mother. His marriage ended disastrously. He longed to confess his homosexuality to a priest but feared being ostracized by the church. He surely wasn’t going to tell his family.

When a homosexual lover exposed him to the world, he suffered a mental breakdown. A Russian court denounced him as a moral degenerate. Some historians speculate that, unhinged by this final condemnation, he ended his life, possibly by drinking arsenic-laced water.

The world knows Pyotr by his anglicized name, Peter—Peter Tchaikovsky. He is celebrated as the musical genius who wrote such masterpieces as the Romeo and Juliet overture, scores for ballets like Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, and The Nutcracker, the stirring 1812 Overture, soaring symphonies, and the opera Eugene Onegin. Who would have guessed that such breathtaking beauty was birthed by such a tortured soul?

Before he died, he penned these heartrending words: “None but the lonely feel my anguish.” One of life’s mysteries is how loveliness is born of ugliness or greatness is forged out of affliction. God always does his greatest work through the most flawed people. It might help us all to make this our faith credo when, like Peter Tchaikovsky, our story is filled with lonely anguish:

God can take my pain and use it to turn my life into a masterpiece.

Consider it pure joy . . . whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.

James 1:2-3, NIV