As a young missionary priest, I wrote a song in a small wooden room on a humid night in the Fiji Islands. I wrote it in English and Spanish. At the time, I was barely beginning to understand the world, yet I was convinced that my time in it was drawing to a close. Illness, exhaustion, and the quiet loneliness that sometimes visits missionaries had wrapped themselves around me. I felt fragile, like a candle flickering in a restless wind.
So, I wrote what I thought might be my final prayer - a song that began with the words: “If I go, let me go with a smile on my face …”
It was not a lament. It was a surrender. A way of placing my trembling, unfinished life into the hands of the One who had sent me so far from home. I remember the moon that night - how it hung above the palms like a patient witness. I remember the faces of those I served, the laughter of children running barefoot along the coral paths, the quiet dignity of the poor who carried joy as if it were a birthright. I wanted to take all of that with me. I wanted my last breath to be gratitude.
But God, in His gentle and disarming way, had other plans.
Thirty years have passed since that night. I am in the USA now, still walking, still working, still discovering that the horizon stretches farther than I ever imagined. The song I wrote as a farewell has become something else entirely: a reminder that my sense of time is not God’s. What I thought was an ending was only a pause, a moment of reshaping, a doorway into a longer journey.
Looking back, I see that the song was never about dying. It was about learning to live with open hands. It was about trusting that love, the love I received
and tried to give, would outlast my fears. It was about believing that joy is not naïve but necessary; that the poor - about whom I once asked God to let me “feel their joy” - would continue to teach me to see the world with unguarded eyes.
Time has softened me. It has also sharpened me. I no longer rush to interpret what God is doing.
I no longer assume I understand the seasons of my life. I have learned that God’s timing is not a schedule but a mystery, unfolding quietly like dawn over the Pacific.
And so, I keep the song close. Not as a farewell, but as a compass. A reminder that whenever my time truly comes, whether soon or far, I want to meet it the same way I wanted to meet it then: with a smile, with peace, with gratitude for the people and places that shaped me, and with the certainty that love, if it is alive, can still make this old world better for everyone.
In the end, the song was right. But the timing was God’s.
If I go, let me go, with a smile on my face, with the sun, with the wind or the moon above.
If I go, I wanna go, with a smile on your face, with the love and the peace that you gave me every day, if I go.
If I go, don't let me be sad, don't let me down. let me see how your love is spreading around to renew the world.
Don't let me be late, don't let me rush, let me feel all the joy that your poor are enjoying since you came down.
If I go, let me go, with a smile on my face, with the sun and the wind or the moon above.
If I go, if I go, I want to be new, I want to reach with my hand in your hand, walking up where the love never turns off its lights. I wanna stay, umm, forever more by your side day by day, night by night, where the time never knows the end,
If I go, if I go. I wanna take, umm, memories of love, all the people, the places, and moments that we always love the most. No matter what comes, umm, no matter what goes, if your love is alive, this old world will be better for everyone.
If I go, let me go, with a smile on my face, with the sun, with the wind, or the moon above.
If I go, I wanna go, with a smile on your face, with the love and the peace that you gave me every day, if I go.
If I go, I wanna, wanna go, yes, I wanna go with a smile on my face, with the love and the peace that is living in you and me. I wanna, wanna go, with a smile on your face, with the love and the peace that you gave me every day.
Columban Fr Diego Cabrera Rojas lives and works in the USA.
Related links
- Read more from The Far East - July 2026
