Well folks there she is. That is my Anna. All dressed up and doing her thing for the Christmas program at our church. Anna had a small speaking part and she was to sing with the rest of the kiddos in the choir.
I am a music person. I sing (A Lot) I play the piano, mostly by ear. I love to harmonize and teach harmony and this year God has called me to do something new. I have been writing my own music to sing for the church. (I may or may not share that with you later) My job for the kids Christmas program is to teach the kids the music. Now to do this I must lay all of my "perfection" aside and just have fun. Kids are cute and Christmas programs are to be cute right?
When I married my husband and heard his version of several songs I knew there was going to be a 50:50 chance that our kids could sing. Anna has the musical heart of her mother and the voice of her daddy.
So picture this. Small church, filled up with grandparents all ready to see their grandkids shine. This is their moment. Their time to shine. The music starts. My hands come up to bring them in right where they are suppose to sing and then out of the far left corner is one child singing very loudly, and by very loudly I mean this is the only child you can hear and it is more like shouting. So loudly that some of the older kids quit singing and started to chuckle. I don't think this child hit one note right. Who is this child and why is he/she screaming???!!! This is not how we rehearsed this!! I turn away from my focus of the music for one split second so that I could see who in the world was making all of that NOISE!!! Imagine the look on my face when I realized that this child singing with every ounce of heart she had, not hitting one right note or even coming close to it. Missing all of the cues, and at some parts of the song she was the only one singing, was none other than my own little Anna. After a while her little face was turning red because she was singing so hard.
I have to admit I ,at that moment, wanted to put my finger to my lips to tell her to quiet down. I, at that moment, wanted to stop the music and tell her to just stand there and look pretty. I know I know what an awful mom I am!!! "Just leave her alone", you say, "just let her sing". "bless her little heart" But I am the musical person. My kids are supposed to be musical too. We are suppose to be just like the "Osmond's" or the "Partridge Family" . We were suppose to all sing in perfect harmony while Daddy ran the sound. At that moment I felt like she was Mumble, the penguin on "happy feet" who (by judging the talent of his parents) was destined to be a great singer. Only, when he tried to find his song, a horrible noise came out instead and shocked everyone.
As I was trying to block all of this out of my mind and focus on the task at hand, God reminded me of something. Psalms 100:1 "Make a joyful NOISE unto the Lord...." Well a noise was exactly what she was making, but then I realized something. Anna doesn't know that she can't sing. Anna doesn't know that singing isn't her gift. Anna does know however, that she loves God and she taught us all a lesson that night. She was singing with a joyful heart. She got on stage and sang all the wrong notes with every ounce of heart God gave her, which is what we are suppose to do.............and the whole time.....God heard it in perfect harmony............
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