Category: faith

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Singing Praises {Simple Moments, Bigger Picture}

Yesterday was the definition of a blustery day. It was rainy and windy and COLD. I had spent the day running here and there; I dropped off Lily and Emmy at their respective schools, I went to my MOPS meeting, I ran errands and picked up Emmy from a playdate. When evening finally came and I had made dinner, the girls were settling down for bed. The last thing I wanted to do was go back outside. However, I had one more obligation left.

I rushed to fill the dishwasher, throw the unfolded laundry off my bed and back into a basket in case I got home late, and put pajamas on Emmy. I smoothed out their unmade beds, which in our morning rush we rarely make. I laid out pajamas for Lily, who was reading with her daddy.

Emmy trailed behind me as I gathered together my shoes, purse and coat. “But I don’t want you to go, Mommy!” Deep inside, I didn’t want to go, either. I gave her a big hug and a kiss.

Gently pushing her toward Ed, I said, “Go read a book with Daddy,” and gave Lily her hug and kiss.

I drove toward church, almost hypnotized by the radio and the drizzling rain. I was tired and really didn’t want to be out and about again.

As I opened the door to the back of the building, I could hear the choir rehearsing already. They finished singing the hymn as I sat down in my spot. Our director stood up and taught us a breathing technique he learned at a conference. “Breath down low,” he said. As I drew in a breath, I felt pinpricks of pain all over my upper body from all the stress I was holding in. They made me not want to breath at all.

But slowly, carefully, I began to take slow, deep breaths and the pinpricks slowly started to ease.

We started to rehearse in earnest, first and second sopranos blending together, then adding altos, tenors and basses. The pinpricks were disappearing.

“Take out your Bach books,” our director said.

Bach. I love singing Bach!

Jesus, priceless treasure, source of purest pleasure, truest friend to me!

Our voices raised, harmonies flowed, and our praises lifted up above us, along with the last of my aches and pains.

When rehearsal was over, the blustery day had turned into a blustery night. As I drove home, pop songs were playing on the radio. After singing such joyous, praise-filled music, the stuff on the radio seemed lifeless and trite. But that didn’t matter. My heart was full and light again, and I was looking forward to coming home to my husband and kissing my children in their beds.

Simple BPM

Click here to hear the melody to “Jesus, Priceless Treasure.”

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The Bells Are Ringing

My bathroom window was open as I was putting on make-up. The sounds of traffic and dogs barking drifted through the window, along with the faint sounds of church bells ringing the hour. The bells are a few blocks away, at the church where I teach preschool. If I didn’t know that the bells ring every hour, I might not have noticed their sound. I love those church bells; they remind me of the bells that rang across the street when I was little. I lived in a red brick parsonage with my family; on a street paved with red bricks, by the red brick church with a tall, tall steeple.

Our grade school was just down the street. In the middle of the morning, while we were at class, we would occasionally hear the bells ring out…but at the wrong time.

Imagery of a bell tolling is used as a symbol of death. And that’s exactly why those bells were ringing. A funeral was taking place at the church. As kids, we knew what the bell ringing meant. Listening to the peal of the bells would cause us to pause in our school work, and then we would bend our heads down again to the task at hand. And so, life went on.

It is harder for life to go on after hearing those funeral bells as an adult. I have been thinking about my mother a lot these days. She’s been gone for almost two years. The month of October, with all the pink for breast cancer awareness, used to be easier to face together. Pink is good; pink reminds us that we still need to fight. But pink can also be a lonely color when I worry about the recurrence of cancer.

But yet, I have to laugh as I read that last sentence. In the children’s book, “Purplicious”, the main character moans, “I’m the only on in the whole wide world who likes pink. I am all alone. No one understands me,” when all her friends declare that pink is out and black is in.

By moaning that I am all alone in my breast cancer journey, I am like that pouting little girl in the book. I am not really alone. I am surrounded by love. And of course, I am forgetting that death has no hold on me–a lesson my mother taught me. She had no fear of breast cancer; no fear of death, as one of her favorite hymns proclaims:

Lord, let at last thine angels come, to Abr’hams bosom bear me home, that I may die unfearing;
And in its narrow chamber keep my body safe in peaceful sleep until thy reappearing.
And then from death awaken me that these mine eye with joy may see,
O Son of God, thy glorious face, My Savior and my fount of grace.
Lord Jesus Christ, My prayer attend, my prayer attend, and I will praise thee without end!

What a joyful sound, the ringing of the bells!

The words above are from the hymn “Lord, Thee I Love with All My Heart.”

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Make pink more powerful by joining the Army of Women to help breast cancer research.