A few months before my sweet Lana passed away, she recorded 31 Psalms for a project we were working on. We were writing a devotional about prayer to highlight 31 of the 150 Psalms in the Bible.

I asked Lana if I could record her reading them. Then my sister and my kids and I would record some piano music to go along with each.

It wasn’t until after she passed away that I realized I had forgotten to ask her to record one of the Psalms that was most precious to me: Psalm 20. That was the Psalm I was reading when I was talking to God about marrying her. I especially loved verse 4:

"May He give you the desire of your heart and make all your plans succeed."

I prayed that prayer over and over, that God would give me the desire of my heart… to marry Lana.

It was a long-shot prayer. In fact, I had read this Psalm just moments after Lana told me she was happy with her single life, wasn’t ready to commit to anyone or anything, and walked away from the spot on the floor where we had been sitting and talking about our future.

That was 35 years ago.

But God eventually answered those prayers! Lana said, "Yes," and 23 years of marriage and 6 kids later, I still shake my head at how God encouraged me through that Psalm so many years ago.

How could I have forgotten to ask her to record that Psalm while she was still alive?

From time to time, I’ve looked back, wishing for a do-over. Maybe you’ve felt the same about something in your life.

Well, this week, I got one!

A friend posted a recording he had made using a new AI voice tool. He fed a sample of his own voice into the system, then asked it to read back to him something new he just had written.

In all my years of studying new technologies, including voice technologies like this one, I’ve never heard anything so lifelike. It sounded just like my friend… and it was! It was just brilliantly edited and rearranged so he could say something new.

Then I thought of my wish for a do-over.

I quickly signed up for an account (for $1!) and uploaded 5 minutes of Lana reading another Psalm (Psalm 119… also one of my favorites). Then I typed in the text of Psalm 20.

I clicked the button, and within 30 seconds, I began hearing Lana’s sweet voice again, reading to me from Psalm 20… the missing Psalm that had meant so much to me 35 years ago.

I was in tears.

Yesterday, I decided to record some piano music to go along with it: the love theme from Titanic called, "My Heart Will Go On."

Today, I’d like to share it with you.

No, we can’t go back again. But sometimes, the answer lies ahead of us, in this case, in the form of a new technology that has brought back some very precious memories.

Keep pressing on. Keep moving forward. Keep trusting in God, who can always make a way… even when there seems to be no way at all.

Listen to Psalm 20, read by Lana Elder, with piano by Eric Elde