This is my story, This is my song,
Praising my Savior, All the day long
I remember my grandma playing the organ, and the piano, at one of those little ‘on the prairie’ type of churches. Surrounded by corn fields and hog farms. We visited all throughout my childhood, and for a couple of years while she was dying of cancer, we went every week. In an age of of modern churches exchanging the pews for padded seats, this church still has the wooden pews. The small stage up front where we performed our VBS skits. Where we would sit up front while the pastor taught the children’s story before dismissing us to Sunday School in the musty basement with the flannelgraphs.
I hear that song, as we sung it a couple of weeks ago at our contemporary church, and instead of the bass guitars and drums, I hear my grandma on the piano. Playing at church. Playing at home. Practicing, always practicing. I would sit on the grey couch and read all her back issues of Reader’s Digest (I loved the Drama in Real Life stories), while she practiced the piano.
She was always playing, always praising. Her house and life was infused with the daily goodness of God, in that old-fashioned farmer’s wife kind of way. It didn’t feel offensive and stifling as a child, coming from a grandma. It was just life. It was her story, it was her song.
And yet, now, as an adult, I can’t figure out how to infuse my life with that same type of daily song. Her life was so much harder than mine, and yet that was her story, her song.
I know some of it is personality differences, her, the off the charts Extrovert and, me the off the charts I. But I can’t help wondering if, in my struggle to have an authentic faith and to avoid the legalistic, soul-constricting beliefs I learned from being passed on to my kids, I’m missing out in some way.
I can sit and dissect the lyrics of that song, analyzing the parts that I disagree with and why some of it is bad theology. But when those strains begin to play, and I hear the words, I just picture my grandma, playing, and singing, and living the story of Jesus.
Yesterday was the 18th anniversary of my grandma’s death.
Beautiful. Infusing this kind of dedication to Jesus is hard but He has such grace for you sister, for all of us. Know that He sees your heart. Be blessed today.
Oh, wow. I love this song… have you ever heard the version by Twyla Paris? It is my first week at Five Minute Friday… I am grateful I read your post… and wow, remembering after 18 years is fantastic. Love, love, love…
Here is my first five minute friday prompt writing ever!
Thanks for the comment. I used to read my grandmother’s Readers Digests too. I loved the little quotes and sayings they scatter throughout the magazine. Happy Friday!
A beautiful tribute. I’ll be happily singing this song the rest of the day…
I sympathize with you Caris. Sometimes I envy those for whom “walking with Jesus” seems so simple and natural, even if it now often strikes me as simplistic and shallow. I miss the time in life when faith seem more natural and simple–though I now see that it never was as much that way as I liked to think it was. I think each of us encounter and experience faith differently and for some, like you, it involves more wrestling and questions, while for others, like your grandmother, it is simpler. Her story fit her life. You are on a journey with God that fits with who you are and who you are becoming.
She sounds like a lovely woman Caris. I have experienced those little country churches too, and there is something very special about them. There is a simple faith that is lived out in the lives of the congregation. I know that the Father is delighted with who you are – after all He is the one who formed you. He will use you in ways you cannot imagine as you faithfully seek Him. Your story is different from your Grandma’s, but it is just as beautiful.
Yeah, it’s so easy to romanticize the past…..I wonder why that is, when we logically know life was just as hard, if not harder.
Oh I haven’t. I’ll have to look for that. I haven’t heard Twyla since I was little!
thanks, that was sweet. Hard to remember though! Sometimes I find myself wanting to go to those kinds of churches, even though I know I wouldn’t like them now, lol….nostalgia is such a great thing though.
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