Song of My Life
“Choose one song to represent you, your life, your dreams. When you are ready, stand up and sing.”
Me? The one with a new favorite song every week? Music feeds me with new ideas, with new ways of expressing myself. It deepens meaningful moments and breaks silence with sound. Only one song?
“I’m like a bird, I’ll only fly away. I don’t know where my soul is, I don’t know where my home is… (Nelly Furtado)”
Sitting on the cool tile floor, trying to hide from the Brazilian heat, I heard the lyrics once more. “That is me,” I thought. “I can’t figure out things. I can’t make big commitments yet, because I just don’t know.” I didn’t know—that over the next six years I would spend three of them in that beautiful foreign country I would learn to call my second home. My transition song. From one place to another.
“It seems to easy to call you “Savior,” Not close enough to call you “God”…I want to fall in love with You… (Jars of Clay)”
I looked into the night sky and saw unfamiliar stars. Nothing felt familiar except the song playing on a borrowed walkman. Another eight hour layover on my way home from Brazil. Was Brazil home or was where I was born home? Or maybe, was this Savior I was learning to call my God where my home was. My call for love, and to be loved.
“I love you, I have loved you all along. And I forgive you for being away for far too long. So keep breathing cause I’m not leaving you anymore…(Nickleback)”
The car was stopped, but I left the engine running to hear the rest of the song on the radio. My tears fell in my lap, but it felt good—so good—to let go. I had fallen in love with God. I knew I loved Him and He loved me. But time and space and life happens. I forget. And I wake up wondering how the heck I got to where I was. How long was I sleeping? My me and God song.
“We are reaching for the future, we are reaching for the past…We are desperate to discover what is just beyond our grasp, but maybe that’s what heaven is for…(Carolyn Arends)”
My sister delicately pressed the piano keys as I turned the pages. The microphone seemed a bit awkward, because we normally just sang in our living room, but we managed on that Sunday night church service. I had been singing in church since I was 13, but I liked it best with my sister playing the piano. There was something special in how she played. Something that sounded like family and home. My cry for belonging.
“Hush my dear, lie still and slumber, holy angels guard thy bed…lullaby…go to sleep my love, my dear…God will keep thee ever near…(Mr.Rasback)”
We stood at attention with our hands at our sides. I tried to think glowing thoughts to make my face look radiant. Maybe someone would notice me in the third row, left hand side of the choir. It was our annual Christmas concert, and we were singing the song our director had written. We knew, as always, that at the end he would choke up and tell the parents how wonderful we were (except for Robert). My favorite lullaby.
“We like to have fun and we never fight, you can’t dance and stay uptight, it’s such a supernatural delight, everybody was dancin in the moonlight…(Van Morrison)”
“This song reminds me of you.” He said with a smile, driving down the road. “Really?” I thought. “Good.” Because I want to dance. I want to celebrate and enjoy. I want to remember how to be lighthearted and know that I won’t save the world, but I can make my little part of it smile. My smile song.
“But I would walk 500 miles, and I would walk 500 more, just to be the man who walked a thousand miles to fall down at your door…(The Proclaimers)
The movie played on repeat, showing pictures of my cousin and his new wife—but I was captured by the music. “I want that.” I said to myself. “Someday.” My love song.
“Let’s get rich and give everybody warm sweaters and teach them how to dance, let’s get rich and build a house on a mountain making everybody look like ants from way up there, you and I, you and I…(Ingrid Michaelson)”
Repeat. Yes, this was the right song. I would sing the girls part, he would sing the guys part, and then all the guests would join in the chorus, snapping and clapping. That is the song I want at my wedding. That is the kind of wedding I want to have. Someday.
“I can only imagine what my eyes will see when your face is before me. I can only imagine…(Mercyme)”
I stopped in the middle of the song to translate again. The words meant so much to me—and I felt like I couldn’t get them into the small vocabulary that I knew of her language. Angela—my angel. I didn’t know that would be the last time I would get to sing for her, holding her hand as she laid there in bed. It was her heart, you know—her heart was so full of love that it couldn’t hold the rest properly. Now she is my angel in heaven. My future song.
“I want a moment to be real, want to touch things I don’t feel, want to hold on, and feel I belong…(Googoo Dolls)”
Treasure planet. I sat mesmerized in front of the Disney cartoon, rewinding and playing the song again. It was perfect. It captured me and wanting more. It held the emotion of growing up and standing on a place that was yours. It was what I heard the kids on the street saying every day, hidden behind their curses and ghetto attitudes. My growing song.
“Look up, look up, look up and see the sky, love, you see that moon shining so high up above us? It rolls around on account of a bunch of scientific stuff. I like to think it does just because He loves us...(Bradley Hathaway)”
“Genius.” I thought, as I stared up at him singing on the stage. I didn’t like most of the other songs, but he struck gold right there. He was right about my age, with much of the same story. He’d started out writing poems—I’d met him at a writing workshop. Now he was morphing into songs. I had a lil crush on him until the girl in front of me made such a spectacle of herself, fawning over him that I decided that was the end of that. I wouldn’t join that group. My night song.
I stood, and I sang.