Four Christmases

At my Minnesota college, the biggest event of the year was neither homecoming football nor even graduation. It was Christmas Festival, a four-day musical celebration during which ten thousand people descended upon campus to wear Norwegian sweaters, to eat lutefisk  and lefse in the cafeteria and listen to the spectacle put on by St. Olaf College’s five auditioned choirs and its orchestra. That is (in part) why I chose to study there, to immerse myself year after year in perfectly blended anthems to baby Jesus.

I did not know that each November, five rehearsals per week would spin lyrics and melodies into my bones, and that those songs, like a scale, would measure out for me the contents of my heart. Christmas has a funny way of making us aware.

*

My first year, I signed up to give the devotional before our first concert. I signed up because I thought I was spiritually deep and had so much to say and not because I love speaking. That afternoon I ripped up paper after tear-stained paper trying to figure out what to say to 100 of my peers who were cooler than I.

So I showed up with scribbled notes and told the choir that our music, which was about Light and Grace being born within us, had something to teach us about grace. We didn’t have to be perfect. We just had to be present and recognize the holy before us.

My words were ahead of my heart. The whole concert through, my mind babbled. I thought I had worried too much what others would think of my talk; I thought about how it sounded; I thought about my brother and godparents visiting and how I could get my work done in time to go out to dinner with them after the last concert; I thought about how I was not really thinking about Jesus, how I was unrelentingly focused on myself, how therefore I was not good enough for this beauty and this moment and this Savior.

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, I sang at the end of each night. I was unsettled.

*

I was a sophomore, and something was shifting in me. I was hurting. I had become entangled in painful new experiences. I didn’t know how to make sense of people, or myself. I was tired. The worst of “faith crisis” was yet to come, but the wondering and wandering were beginning.

O why should I wander an alien from thee, or cry in the desert thy face to see?

My comfort and joy my soul’s delight—O Jesus my savior, my song in the night.

I sang the words over and over, harder and harder each time, trying to mean them, trying will Jesus to comfort me. What reached back to me was silence.

In the middle of our Saturday night performance, I thought, How absurd we are, singing to this baby who was born 2000 years ago, calling him God. It seemed absurd in the way that if you look at the letter “h” long enough, you no longer recognize its shape or connections or meaning. It becomes only a collection black lines constructed haphazardly on a page.

Were the rocky friendships and faltering prayers just haphazard elements of my life now? Or was there a pattern? Stay with us, Lord Jesus, stay with us; it soon is evening and night is falling, we sang. I wondered if I believed this, or only hoped for it. I wondered if there was a difference.

*

Junior year: I was broken and small and lonely and full of an overwhelming sense of loss. For two weeks now I had been crying daily. I had ended a relationship that was good and affirming and simply not right. The innocent faith of my childhood was gone, being replaced with something that was still growing, still feeble, still slow. I had lost even my sense of myself.

I had not, however, lost God. I could not quite name it, but I had not lost my belovedness, nor my chance for a dazzling new beginning. Along with my sadness, there was in those nights an almost imperceptible sense of possibility. God so loved the world, we sang, and the conductor told us that the whole song was in the word “so.”

In just a few weeks I would travel to East Africa, and I would love its people and its land and its language and its version of me. I would meet, in great humility and sadness, some wonderful friends and my future husband and a sense of the miraculous that would pull me back to a lasting kind of joy. My friends back in Minnesota would chart their own new paths, some joyful, some more painful than ever before. In all of this, we would be so loved.

*

In every Christmas Festival, there is a magical moment—the choir has taken our places in a great circle around the audience. We are ready to sing our first two songs in the round before processing to the stage. The lights dim to black; the conductor raises his arm; there is a split-second of darkness, silence; the room is pregnant. Then the first lovely aching note of the strings is played, and perhaps a chime is struck, and we have begun.

What I don’t realize until much later is that we hold that empty moment in a tiny cavern inside us and we carry it with us for the rest of the night and it is the hope and expectation from which all our music springs.

*

We were seniors now, and we could scarcely believe it, in the way that twenty-two year olds think time goes by so fast. Before our final performance, Sunday evening, the other senior girls droned on about how they would be sobbing when it was all over, how their voices would crack and they would not be able to sing the last chorus. I, ever slow to process, was sure I would not cry.

After the last cutoff, the audience stood in ovation and I looked out over that crowd one final time. That’s when I spotted the woman, with newly graying hair and a wrinkle or two and a Norwegian sweater like everyone else. Her eyes were shiny with tears and she just kept clapping and clapping, and I could feel the depth of what this music meant to her. Perhaps she had once sung on this stage; perhaps she had been divorced or lost a job or her mother had cancer; perhaps her daughter, who had never quite found a niche in high school, was singing in the front row of the freshman choir; perhaps she hadn’t really heard, for a very long time, that God dwells among us in love.

For the first time in four years of singing, I imagined the life of the audience along with my own. I noticed that we were all there, together, wondering and worrying and over-analyzing and zoning out and then suddenly being caught up all together in the beauty of it—inexplicable, unreasonable, hard-to-believe but absolutely-rock-bottom-still-there. 

The palpable sense of God's love surrounded us all. Tears were streaming down my face.

A fool's heart

It is my first day of divinity school, and I have decided I need music in my life. I bike over to the music building and ask an undergrad where the practice rooms are. They are gloriously empty, and I find a beautiful Yamaha and sit down to practice for my choir audition tomorrow. I play through a book of spirituals, trying to pick one that sounds good with my voice range, one that my rusty vocal chords can handle.

I flip to Deep River and blink at the high A on the page, but decide to give it a try anyway. I play the intro and begin. It is a beautiful song, and when I reach the climax-- "that promised land where all is peace" -- I nail the high A. I sing it again, and again, and again, and I am in love with singing, and I am convinced this will be my place of refuge over the next three years. The practice room will be a prayer chapel, a place of worship, a break from heavy words and ideas.

In the afternoon I go back to run through one more time, but the practice rooms are full. Several undergrads wait in the hall. I decide to go home.

I get dinner in the oven and my roommates are gone and John is outside studying on the back porch. I find a the starting pitch on Youtube, and begin my song. I am happy, I am happy, and then I get to that climax again, the one I nailed six times in a row this morning, and I splat. I try again, and that gravelly crackly thing is in the way and I can't sing it anymore. It's not as though it's out of my range; there is a beautiful high A on the other side of the gravel--I know because I heard it this morning. But tonight, there is something in the way. I try ten times, probably, but I can't find a way to hit it consistently like I was this morning. This piece will have to go. I'll sing the safe piece for the audition instead, the one that sounds good enough, I hope. And then I will just cross my fingers that in the "warm-up" part of the audition, I can fake my way through the high notes.

"You sounded amazing," John says when he comes inside, but I am grouchy. He must think I'm being a perfectionist. He must not have heard it through the glass.

So I sing for him, demonstrate for him for the first time what it sounds like when that thing is in my voice, in my way.

He gets it. He agrees I should sing the safe song.

*

This isn't about an audition, though.

This, my friends, is about vulnerability and failure and longing. In this moment, it all comes back to me. This pattern started at age sixteen, and all through college I sang through and around it, some months thinking maybe I'd finally overcome that thing and could sing freely again. Clearly, I never quite have. This is the shape of my musical life. This is the tender piece of my heart which will always produce a tear. This is about when the object of joy and refuge and beauty becomes an object of frustration and inadequacy.

This is about the question, "Do I want to risk it all again? Do I even want to sing if it will dredge up all these emotions again?"

But I have a fool's heart, a longing for that snippet of beauty from this morning, apparently at any cost. So of course the answer is yes. I want to risk it. I want to sing.

And I will find a place to do it whether I make this choir or not.

//
(If you're interested, here's the back story on my saga with singing and failing and splatting high notes.)

Poetry, song, and the language of faith

Photo by saffroncisco

When I started asking big questions in college, when I started drowning in my own thoughts and fears and the simultaneous existential crises of my friends, I could not turn to theologians or philosophers or scientists or even pastors for respite. I see now as I look back that even when my mind was rebelling, questioning, unsettling, I had a truer kind of knowing in poetry, music, and art.

During that time of my life, and many times since, the book I have continued to return to is a lovely little reflection on faith and art: Walking on Water by Madeleine L’Engle, who writes about “probable impossibilities,” about naming and being named, about vulnerability and faithful doubt. Her approach of honest questioning, coupled with the openness to receive and affirm it all, has stayed with me.

“I have been asked if my Christianity affects my stories,” L’Engle writes in Walking on Water, “and surely it is the other way around; my stories affect my faith, restore me, shake me by the scruff of the neck, and pull this straying sinner back into an awed faith.”

My stories, yes. And the stories and poems of others. My faith has been formed and re-formed and renewed in the poetry of songs and hymns and liturgy.

So at a time faithful people are abuzz with what kind of programs and churches and relationships and opportunities and strategies are the best for helping the young and the old cultivate their faiths, I want to offer simply this: let us not forget the arts.

I sang in my mom’s church choir when I was old enough to talk. And little by little, as I grew, I noticed the words in the songs. I began to cut out pieces of the church bulletin that held prayers or liturgy or music I liked. I taped them in a little pink journal. I began to close my eyes during the songs we sang, to sense the wonder of Christmas, the agony of the passion story, the joy of Easter.

The poetry of sacred music was not restricted to church, because God cannot be restricted. I found God everywhere good music and good poetry were offered.

In high school, we sang secular music, sure. We also sang gospel: The storm is passing over, hallelu. We sang Mozart: Hail true body, born of the virgin Mary, who truly suffered and sacrificed on the cross for humanity. We sang poetry, scripture, psalms, laments.

There were songs that touched my heart more deeply than any sermon. The idea of listening for God’s guidance first struck me when I was ten and sang, Do you know your shepherd’s voice?

I experienced the power of nonviolence and justice during a high school choral tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr.: The world is sick with war. When I lost my voice in eleventh grade, I leaned into Jesus: if my joys and comforts die, I know Truth is living.

I felt peace in the midst of newness in my first college choir rehearsal when we sang the twenty-third Psalm, and I meant it wholeheartedly when I sang in sophomore year of college, the time of my doubt, why should I wander an alien from Thee?

And years later, I still feel shivers of truth and beauty every time I sing certain hymns.

So I think what I want to say is simply that I am grateful: to the poets, the liturgists, the composers; to the music teachers, conductors, and mothers; and to a creative God, for the ways in which art can invigorate us, pull us back to amazement, for the ways in which we, as artists, are made co-creators with God and dreamers in an unfulfilled world.

The best of 2013

THE BEST BOOKS:

#5. Dreams from My Father, by Barack Obama

John made fun of me for reading this. Love or hate the president, or just feel exceedingly disappointed in him…either way if you can put that aside, this was a fascinating, well-crafted, insightful memoir on race in America, written long before he had a political career.

#4. Torn: Rescuing the Gospel from the Gays-vs.-Christians Debate, by Justin Lee

This book honestly opened my eyes. Justin is a rational, level-headed, patient guy with an amazing story, and he is so good at being understanding of people on all "sides" of this issue. His vulnerability in this memoir made me more compassionate.

#3. The Dog Stars, by Peter Heller

This book came out in 2012, but it is my top pick for fiction I read this year. Haunting, disturbing, and ultimately hopeful, Heller tells the story of a pilot who has just a little too much humanity to make it in a post-apocalyptic world. The characters feel like real people, and the book is ultimately an affirmation that the risk of love makes life worth living.

#2. The Pastor, by Eugene Peterson

Maybe it’s just because I want to be a pastor, but this was a lovely memoir by a pastor and the author of The Message paraphrase of the Bible. He’s got some hilarious anecdotes, profound moments, and most of all the narrative is wound around the idea that becoming a pastor was a sort of gradual, slow journey that happened upon him by accident, only for him to realize he was meant for it all along. That ultimately his calling was gifted to him.

#1. When We Were on Fire, by Addie Zierman

I didn’t grow up in quite the evangelical bubble she did, but lots of details she wrote about 90’s Christian culture were familiar. Honestly, though, what makes this memoir amazing is the empathetic, achingly beautiful way she describes loneliness, growing up, love, friendship, and grace. If you have ever longed for friendship and community, if you have ever had any interaction with Christian culture whether from outside or in, if you have ever looked for love in all the wrong places only to find it was right beside you all along…you will love this book.

THE BEST DIGITAL MEDIA:

#5. Catching Fire

Because I shamelessly love the Hunger Games story. And because Jennifer Lawrence.

#4. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries

This was a fun web series, and an extremely smart modern adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.

#3. The Office Finale Season

I know it wasn’t as funny without Michael Scott, but  I loved so much the Jim and Pam story this season, because I love when television tries to be realistic and true to life. And then it was nice to see everyone get their happy ending. 

#2. Meet Me at the Edge of the World by Over the Rhine

Granted it’s the only CD I bought this year, but I’m still sure it must be the best one out there! With rich melodies, gorgeous singing, poetic lyrics, this might be my favorite Over the Rhine album yet, which is saying a lot.

#1. This news story about Antoinette Tuff

It’s not often that someone could have the compassion and poise necessary to hold off a gunman in the school office until he calmed down and surrendered himself to the police. Sure, there was some luck and grace involved here, but she decided not to run away, she decided to treat him with the dignity of a regular person, and that is what made the difference.

THE BEST MOMENTS:

#5 Discovering brownie-in-a-mug

You can make a single-serving size in 2 minutes in the microwave. Need I say more?

Photo by ABC Open Riverland

#4 Hiking the Appalachian Trail
My brother Michael and I hiked 74 miles of the Great Smoky Mountains in August. It should be closer to #1, but it rained every single day and we had to wear wet socks. We also saw some sweet views, ate lots of fruit and nuts, and fell into the enchanting rhythm of the woods.

#3 Running the Smoky Mountain Relay

John and I were part of a 12-person relay team running 212 miles across the Smokies. We slept in a van, got lost in the woods, ate granola, and mostly ran and ran over rolling hills with bright green trees and blooming pink buds.

#2 Writing a blog

It’s been reinvigorating to focus on writing my story and terrifyingly good to share it. I need to write to process, to express, to keep moving forward.

#1 Celebrating weddings 

and our first anniversary

Because nothing beats the combination of best friends, red wine, and coming together for a happy moment. And because when John and I get to sit down and watch the rain from a cabin porch in the mountains and really talk about things and affirm each other, marriage is the best.

THE PERSON OF THE YEAR:

#1 Wallace Murchison

He was generous, joyful, kind, affirming. Every interaction or phone conversation with him began with a whoop of excitement and ended with a reminder that “I love you and I’m so proud of you.” I have been interviewing my family members, compiling stories about him. There are sweet anecdotes about book readings and piggy back rides, embarrassing moments, sage advice. But no matter who I’m talking to, it always ends like this: “He was just the best father/father-in-law/grandfather. The best.”

Photo by David Cea

So it’s not surprising that when he passed on to the next realm this year, peacefully and gratefully at 93, he was celebrated and missed by many. At the church before the service, the family had been eating sandwiches in one of the church meeting rooms after the private burial service. When it was time for the public funeral, we walked in from the front of the church. It was all I could do to keep my mouth from dropping wide open. The church was absolutely packed. The balcony was full. There were people standing in the aisles. There was a crowd in the lobby, peeking into the sanctuary. Four hundred people, they said later.

I was just one of those, lucky to have shared with him so many dinners, concerts, graduations, and my wedding. Lucky to have swum in the ocean with him and gone for walks and asked his advice on life and sat next to him in church as he prayed earnestly and sang loudly. I am lucky to have had a week with him this past Easter, a sort of goodbye, a blessing. I undoubtedly took him far too much for granted. All of us were lucky to have him for 93 years.

Losing my voice

After college, I resumed driving the old Taurus station wagon I used to drive in high school. One day when I was cleaning out the car, I found some old cassette tapes and popped one in.

It was a recording of one of my high school voice lessons with Ms. Eden. She was having me warm up my voice and, as usual, I was having trouble with the high notes. She kept trying different approaches, encouraging me to relax, breathe, keep a lighter tone. I kept trying to hit those notes. And then I burst into tears.

I shut off the tape. It was too hard to listen. The rest of the drive, I zoned out, remembering...

I was looking in the mirror, watching the shape of my mouth and looking for jaw tension. But I was not seeing tension, I was seeing tears in my eyes because here was yet another day I was not singing what I knew I could sing, and I did not know where my voice had gone, or why. After weeks of trying to hold it in during lessons, I cried.

And Ms. Eden sat me down on the couch and let me dry my tears and breathe again, and she said gently, “You seem very upset. Is this bigger than just singing? Do you feel like you’ve lost your voice in other parts of life?”

I shook my head fiercely—my eighteen-year-old identity was surely solid. I just loved singing too much to have it become so hard, so painful, so full of failure.

Photo by Phil

*

Ms. Eden was my third voice teacher.

My first voice teacher was my mother, who taught me to sing at bedtime, in the car, with a piano, while playing a tambourine in the local music class. Before long, I was singing solos at church and in the school talent show. It came naturally. I got nervous playing the piano or giving a speech, but I never got nervous singing in front of others.

In tenth grade, I was singing in the school and church choirs and had started my own a cappella group with a friend to prepare for my future as a choir director and music educator. There was only one thing missing—formal voice lessons.

So that January, I met my second voice teacher, Kelli—a big woman with a big soprano voice and an even bigger personality. Within the first month of voice lessons she had begun dramatically calling me, “EKATERRRRINA” as an encouragement to develop a big, operatic soprano tone. After a few months, I seemed to be making progress. That May, I auditioned for the top school choir and was accepted. My a cappella group was gaining reputation. Junior year was going to be perfect.

Over the summer I went to camp for six weeks and didn’t sing much other than church songs.

On the first day of school, my high school choir director had us sight read a piece of music we were going to sing. On the third page of the music, the sopranos got into the high F and G range. These are high notes for the average person, but not very high for an experienced soprano. I opened my voice to sing the line, and a terribly unnatural cracking noise came out instead.

I laughed nervously and hoped no one noticed. Apparently my voice had some catching up to do, from the summer!

I went home and fished out my voice lesson songs. I plunked out warm-ups on the piano and sang along. But the same thing happened every time I got into a higher range. Croak-scratch-silence.

I pounded my fist onto the piano keys in frustration.

*

Voice lessons became torture. It didn’t matter how many times we stopped and went to a lower key. When we went back up, I couldn’t sing the notes. Or sometimes I could, but only after the croak-scratch preceded the note.

So many people asked me if maybe my range had just changed? I heard it so many times I wanted to burst into tears when someone asked. A singer knows. When you are out of range, you are squeaky and off key and it feels stretched, but you can still sing the note. This was different. I had the range in there still. It did not feel stretched. But it felt like something was blocking my notes from coming out.

And no, it also was not a physiological problem. I went to the doctor. They stuck a giant scope up my nose and down into my vocal box while I tried not to gag. There were no polyps or nodes or scratches on my vocal chords. There was a little bit of excess mucous, the doctor told me as though he only wanted to be able to tell me something. He prescribed an anti-mucous spray and Kelli seized the idea and insisted I drink more water and wear a scarf all the time. Because that’s what singers do—Ekaterrrrina!

By the end of the school year, I was able to fake it enough to make choir manageable. I could sing the Fs and Gs, and maybe only half the time the croak-scratch would come before the note, and if I concentrated really hard and sang it really forcefully, half the time it would just come out, and I would breathe a sigh of relief. Voice lessons were another story. Kelli would smile and babble and have me lie on my back, or squat down as I sang high, or point my finger at the imaginary ribbon of sound I was attempting. And I would try and try and try, and come home and crash on my bed and sob for hours.

*

It was around this time that I dove deeper into my piano studies, playing a couple hours a night, sometimes in the dark, sometimes with tears in my eyes.

It was around this time that I made audition tapes for several college music programs, in both voice and piano, but I started leaning more towards piano.

It was around this time that I took an environmental science class and got excited about the demographic transition and the food crisis and international poverty.

It was around this time that I decided I was not going to major in music to become a music teacher. I wanted something bigger than suburbia and teaching some kids to sing. I was going to study English and Environmental Science and then I was going to save the hungry people of the world.

When I arrived at college, I majored in English and minored in Environmental Studies and traveled to Bangladesh and Tanzania to learn about the hungry people.

Halfway through my first semester, still battling the singing problems, I was halted one day, by the music we were singing in choir. Sigrid Johnson explained to our choir how to sing the Latin “lauda” like a praise, strong and free—and how to sing the same “lauda” like a plea in a sad moment, dark and full of aching. I was full of aching, and full of the music, and I rushed back to my dorm room, thinking, music can save the world too. For twenty-four hours I scoured the course catalog and tried to figure out if I could still switch to a music major.

But no, it was too late. And it wasn’t what I wanted anyway. Right?

*

We still don’t know what happened to my voice that year. I quit taking lessons from Kelli Young and had two amazing voice teachers over the next five years, Lisa Eden and Sigrid Johnson. I returned to doctors and clinicians and tried many techniques. At some point I started explaining it this way: Kelli Young was a big woman with a big voice. I was not. She tried to get me to make a sound like hers, but I had to push and force my voice to do this, and I learned some bad techniques.

And even though Ms. Eden worked through it with me during my senior year of high school, and even though I made the all-state choir that year and sang a high “C” in my recital, and even though three years with Sigrid Johnson in college helped me work on breath and healing and loving singing again, and even though I remained a first soprano—

It was never really fixed. It was never easy and free, as it had been. I don’t sing classically anymore, but if I did it would still be there, at least a little.

Sometimes when I hear a song that touches me, I wish music had become my career. I wish it had become my life. Sometimes the questions come, and they are enough to keep me up at night. Why did croak-scratch-silence come into my life? Why did the high notes never come back, no matter how hard I prayed, no matter how long I practiced? Why did I never sing in the St. Olaf Choir? Why did I finally quit voice lessons and go to Africa instead? Was I expanding my horizons, or giving up? What would have happened if I had never lost my voice? Will I ever have the opportunity to fully express my music again?

For all those years, it was music that would make my heart full. These days, there are many things that can fill it—maybe not quite as full, but still. A conversation with a good friend.  A book that feels like a good friend. Helping a student achieve a goal. An impromptu jam session with my brother when I am home. Praying in silence as the sun peeks out from behind the river and the trees. Writing my life and sharing it with all of you.

Maybe all of these things, in part, have become my voice.

Let me be clear. That still doesn't give me an answer to the whys and what-ifs. This is not an attempt to gloss over or try to tie loose ends together in a nice little happy-face package. A loss is a loss, and that is a real thing.

But there is also what we do have. There is also the way unanswered prayers and detours become their own lovely path.

After college, I returned to Africa to teach English at a boarding school. In the evenings, the lonely girls and I would gather in the classrooms and sing songs together, no high notes, no pressure, no fears, just beautiful music in three languages—me and sixty other aching hearts.

For Papa

Three of my four grandparents died in the fall. This year, my first without any of them present, it seems an appropriate time to remember each of them and their gifts to my life. Today’s post is one I wrote about three years ago, for Howard Biggs.

I’m twenty-four now and I’ve never learned to play Clair de Lune properly. I’ve mostly dropped piano, but I played through Debussy’s lullaby today thinking of you. There in your living room, “resting your eyes” as I played Bach and Mozart, were you listening? I was so young, I never knew what was beneath those eyes. At the end you’d always ask “Have you learned Clair de Lune?”
 

At eighty you were still strong enough to mow the church lawn; at eighty-five you kept the smile on your warm face, jovial and generous as Santa Claus. After all, it was your handwriting every year: Dear Katie and Michael, Thank you for the milk and cookies. Ho ho ho. You sat in your chair holding your “King of the Remote” pillow and patted us our heads when we performed our original plays for you. Michael was your little buddy; I, your soccer star.

I didn’t miss you so much, being too young to know you. I read from Matthew at your memorial service and watched them place your ashes in a box in the sanctuary wall, to remain in God’s house. Eleven years old, I joined in extolling with the multitudes your faithfulness to God and community. Then Michael and I fashioned Halloween costumes from your closet (“old man” and “old woman”) and went trick-or-treating in your neighborhood.

The next summer at camp, my friend Kim’s grandma died, and everyone started crying about their own losses. I lay in my bed for an hour at rest period, working myself into tears over you because I wanted to be part of the crowd, to be comforted. After rest period one girl came and asked me what was wrong. I’m sorry I used you.

Grandma tells me stories over sandwiches at Panera now, stories of college during World War II or the racial sentiments in 1920s small-town Nebraska. I’d like to eat a sandwich with you, to learn what was beneath your accepting smile. I’d like to know more about the faith at the source of the prayer you always spoke before Grandma’s roast beef dinner--“Bless these gifts to us and us to Thy service, and may we ever be mindful of the blessings Thou has bestowed upon us.” Most of all, I’d like to play for you a little Debussy.

Making music

When I was little, she would sing with me, holding me on her lap at the piano or strumming along while I watched from inside the guitar case.

I know this mostly from photos.

The bedtime routine included a song every night. I remember You Are My Sunshine, and Blowin' in the Wind: "But what is the answer, Mommy? I know the answer is blowing in the wind, but what IS the answer?"

And she taught me to sing in music class, in church choir, in car rides to auditions, and long hours lying in her bed rehearsing my lines.

I was ten or eleven and I cried when she didn't let me play the lead--the DONKEY--in the Christmas musical that year but learned the limelight isn't the only place to make music.

I wanted to play the piano like her (to be like her) and she began to teach me at five.

When I decided to "quit" at age twelve--because I was going to be too busy with middle school--she made no protests, just let me stop taking lessons long enough to discover the love of piano for myself, and return of my own accord a few years later.

I was going to major in music (like her), just couldn't decide between singing and piano.

When I got caught up in "saving the world" instead, she joined the new song, and came to visit me in Africa.

We found ourselves learning new songs from the Maasai girls, singing late into the night in multiple languages.

*
In every decision of my life, without her needing to speak (though sometimes I felt she wanted to and still she held back) I felt her wisdom without putting it into words, simply pouring out of my fingers onto the keyboard like a well-practiced song.

She showed me what to do by loving example.

*

One day I saw it all clearly. I came home from college and the youth choir at church was giving a musical.

This one was different; the kids wrote some of their own script.

The popular kids and the kids who had never really bloomed--they told their own stories.

The singing was of God's love, and they knew it well.

Sitting in the back with my angsty college doubts and tears in my eyes, I knew that I, too, knew it well.

She taught it well.

*

Happy Mother's Day, Mommy!

Evocations

As I was driving around today, I heard a song that brought back memories. I started thinking about how certain epochs of my life are marked by a song which I played endlessly on repeat, which captured my emotions perfectly at the time. As an ode to the power of music to reflect the existential dilemmas of life, here are my top 5:

1) Age 14. I had just started high school and was no longer good at things. I failed in my various sports and music ventures for the first time in my life. And obviously, as a cheesy Christian goody-goody with frizzy hair and no clue about make-up, I was failing socially. I would literally turn out the lights, climb under my covers, and listen to this song:
this is your invitation. come just the way you are. come find what your soul has been longing for. come find your peace, come join the feast.
come in, this is your invitation.
-Steven Curtis Chapman, "The Invitation" (disclaimer: I can't say this is good music...but give me a break I was 14!)

2) Age 18. Deciding on colleges, majors, career paths. It felt like destiny would be decided in 2004. Little did I know a BA doesn't get you anywhere anyway....Jammed out to this as I drove home from school:
this is your life, are you who you wanna be?
this is your life, is it everything you dreamed that it would be when the world was younger, and you had everything to lose.
-Switchfoot, "This is Your Life"

3) Dealing with my first real breakup, tears running down, sitting at the computer screen:
in summer i can taste the salt in the sea,
there's a kite blowing out of control on a breeze
i wonder what's gonna happen to you, you wonder what has happened to mei want you to know that you don't need me anymore
i want you to know you don't need anyone or anything at all
who's to say where the wind will take you, who's to say what it is will break you
i don't know where the wind will blow
who's to know when the time has come around, i don't wanna see you cry
i know that this is not goodbye
-U2, "Kite"

4) After John's return from volunteering in Palestine. We were elated to finally date in person rather than long-distance, but found we were human, and there was a lot to work through:
when it was over and they could talk about it and they were sitting on the couch,
she said what on earth made you stay
when you finally figured out what i was all about
he said i knew you'd do the right thing even though it might take some time
she said yeah i felt that and it's probably what saved my life
love wash over a multitude of things
love wash over a multitude of things
love wash over a multitude of things, make us whole
-Sara Groves, "When It Was Over"


5) When Grandma died, late one November:
what a time it was, was befriended and was a friend for the longest while
you were here and i never knew you from the sun
snow is on the ground, this is not my landscape now where i find myself without you
oh i never knew you from the sun
deep into my sleeves, deep in my sleeves, pockets down where i always reach
you are there, oh i never knew you from the sun
-The Innocence Mission, "I Never Knew You From the Sun"


What about you?Feel free to leave comments about a song or two that represent a period of your life.