When my kids try something new, I can turn into Hover Mother. Last month, my 12-year-old son was asked to run slides for a praise music performance. He was excited, and I was nervous. How would he manage? So I tagged along for the rehearsal.
As they tweaked equipment and went through “Rock of Ages,” I hummed a harmony. The worship leader asked me to join in, and I told him I wanted to be a back seat singer that night. I still had a blast humming harmony lines to old hymns.
Afterwards, I told the worship leader my parents were gospel musicians, and I learned those hymns in the womb. “They are in my bones,” I told him. He laughed.
Later, I shared this story with a friend who knows the not so happily ever after rest of my childhood. She told me, “God sent those songs to you before you were born to protect and save you.”
She was right, and I never before realized it. When I am happy, and when I am sad, I can haul into an Amazing Grace with every gospel inflection I ever heard or felt. My kids call it my song. I feel the rhythm of Miss Clark, my gospel-singing babysitter, who sang songs while she rolled my hair, as we broke beans on her porch, and while we sat drinking iced tea in swings in her yard while her peacocks strolled around us. We sang together.
Those are the happy memories. Other parts of the childhood are nightmares. It’s hard to trust a heavenly father when your own father betrays you. Unfortunately, a few parents willingly burn their children’s hearts alive on Moloch’s altar to greed, ambition, and power.
I was a child who survived. For years afterwards, I ran from God, afraid to trust Him or anyone else. There was a gaping hole where that heart had been, and I sought ways to fill it that were often destructive. Whenever God would inch towards me, I ran the other direction. The songs in my bones seemed dead, and I never, ever sang them.
Twenty years ago, that ended in a single evening, when I went on a blind date with a quiet artist who looked in my eyes and told me I had had a rough time but would be okay. It was my woman at the well moment, though I didn’t know that artist would become my husband two years later. I learned to trust first him and slowly to turn to the Lord.
When I turned back to the Lord, it was still a slow process. It took years to grow new wineskins and break old habits. Three years ago, I sang again. It was the first time in over 30 years that I had used my singing voice. After my first evening at church choir practice, I called a friend and sobbed the entire trip home.
I could sing again. Part of my soul, long dormant, once again awakened. The old songs, the ones in my bones, came back to life and again became part of who I am.
Now I see that God protected a small part of that childlike heart through music. With Amazing Grace, He knit hope into my bones that was my shield and protection when I was too young to understand it. God imprinted a Rock of Ages into my soul to carry me and give me strength when those terrible things happened. Then He used the years of suffering to turn my heart, so I would forever seek out the lost, wounded, and lonely and invite them to share the cup of His love.
My most important job is to pass those songs and His hope to my children. We none know the challenges our own children will face. Whatever challenges they meet, I can rest if they know and understand that there is always a Rock of Ages to which they can cling and find shelter.
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
let me hide myself in thee;et the water and the blood,
from thy wounded side which flowed,
be of sin the double cure;
save from wrath and make me pure.
Not the labors of my hands
can fulfill thy law’s commands;
could my zeal no respite know,
could my tears forever flow,
all for sin could not atone;
thou must save, and thou alone.
Nothing in my hand I bring,
simply to the cross I cling;
naked, come to thee for dress;
helpless, look to thee for grace;
foul, I to the fountain fly;
wash me, Savior, or I die.
While I draw this fleeting breath,
when mine eyes shall close in death,
when I soar to worlds unknown,
see thee on thy judgment throne,
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
let me hide myself in thee.
“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well” – Psalm 139:13-14.
