Musically speaking <3

I saw a survey type question on Social Media recently asking if you could go to any concert, who would it be. I didn’t answer on that site, but in my heart I thought it would certainly be one where someone I love was involved. 

We had three children who inherited the musical genes from both sides of our families that somehow skipped a generation with Russ and I. While we love music, we just aren’t inclined to produce it vocally or instrumentally despite our parents’ best efforts. But our children were another story and participated in multiple recitals, concerts and musicals. 

Between them they learned at least a dozen instruments. Our living room often looked like a music store or band room or both. And now we have some little ones again to attend concerts for plus our Sarah is teaching middle school orchestra and we love seeing her lead these young people as they learn. 

However, I have very tenderly been remembering a concert I attended about four years ago I believe that is etched in my heart more tangibly than if I had been able to grab my phone and record digitally. 

I can see it all clearly still. I was standing in Rachel and Zach’s kitchen right by the refrigerator. Joel, who was never one for putting himself on the stage of attention, for some reason decided to let me know he knew all the words to a song that was playing frequently on the radio. 

I can see him looking up at me with those eyes that seem to bore right into the deepest crevices of my soul. His little chubby hands that used to kind of shake when they had to do anything involving a fine motor skill were tugging nervously at the side seam of his pants. And knowing Joel, they were most like pj pants. I confess I don’t remember his attire, because all I could see were his eyes as he belted out every word of Matthew West’s “You’re the God who Stays.”

That song doesn’t come on the radio that I don’t remember our little guy singing every line perfectly. I was smiling but oh the tears were falling as this, to me perfect, little cherub declared God to be the one that would “run in his direction, when the whole world walks away.”* 

At that point in his life, all he knew was the love and acceptance of every adult and child around him (with just random bouts of sibling conflict now and then). It broke me to know that he, like every single one of us, had days ahead where it would seem he was all alone. Even as I type this, I ache that any of them have to know what rejection is like. How it is to have given up on yourself, this is a concept I so wished that little one would never know the pit of it. I feel it for all of us. 

But it is in those seasons, we grow closer to God and we realize our own humanity as we lick our wounds and are reminded of wounds we have inflicted on others. We are all in need of grace and to be reminded that God is the God who stays. In fact He dwells, with us and within us. 

How blessed we are <3