Music

Whispers in the Storm

| Mommakisses

As I have said before, here, music has always been a huge part of my life. Music speaks to my heart. I tend to take notice of lyrics, which my kids and husband can find frustrating. I don’t know how many times they try to enjoy a song and I find myself asking, “Can you not HEAR what they are saying???”

Tonight I was in the process of preparing for dinner. I wanted spaghetti squash. However, I was not at a store that carried it. So I decided I would make due with a gluten free spaghetti. Have you used that stuff? It’s a 50/50 shot at working. Hit or miss. A crap shoot.

Tonight was not my night. Tonight was chaos.

Oh, it started calm enough. Four of the kids were outside playing. My oldest two were doing their own things. I put on some worship music and started chopping. G came down to take out the trash, and changed my music, adding hip hop to my worship. J came down and added alternative rock into my worship. So much for the calm.

Have mentioned there are six kids in my household? All of them taking turns letting me know they are “starving” right this minute, and will die if they don’t eat (fill in the blank with whatever they are trying to take from the kitchen when they can clearly see I am working on dinner) right now! And when Momma says no… let the melting down of children begin.

Drama? My house? Why would you ask such a thing?

While the cutting board is on the counter, I started on veggies for tomorrow’s lunch. The next thing I know I have six additional hands stirring all the pots on my stove. And fighting over who gets to stand on the stool to do the stirring. In the middle of this fun, K says, “Is it supposed to look like that?”

Um. No.

My lovely gluten free spaghetti has followed the tired children’s footsteps and had a meltdown. What is supposed to be a yummy pasta has become a soupy goop. Ugh.

As I scrambled to come up with enough odd pasta to not waist the sauce I made, it occurs to me the song playing has played before. I start to realize someone must have changed my setting on this song, and now it’s on a loop, however I’m cooking, so I don’t check my phone. Over and over the lyrics hit me. Usually it was at the chorus when I realize it has repeated again:

Chorus
His love is deep, His love is wide/And it covers us/His love is fierce, His love is strong/It’s furious/His love is sweet, His love is wild/And it’s waking hearts to life

The love of Christ is deep, wide, fierce, strong, sweet, wild. It’s covering and furious. It is a song to wake the very heart to what life should be. Abundant, full, satisfying, hopeful.

I hit pause, and sat down with my family. After the meal was done, I remembered the song, and grabbed my phone to stop it from looping… only it wasn’t set to loop. Yes, you read that right. My phone looped a song, probably five times, and it wasn’t set to do so. It played through 11 songs, plus the 5 my kids added and got hung up on this one song from Bethel Music and Jeremy Riddle.

Wow.

Tonight I am going to spend some time thinking on these words, and let them whisper to my tattered soul. My God loves me, and he is singing to me tonight. In the storm, my heart is waking to life.

Furious by Jeremy Riddle

Verse 1
Nothing can tear us from
The grip of His mighty love
We’ve only glimpsed, His vast affection
Heard whispers of, His heart and passion
It’s pouring down…

Chorus
His love is deep, His love is wide
And it covers us
His love is fierce, His love is strong
It’s furious
His love is sweet, His love is wild
And it’s waking hearts to life

Verse 2
The Father loves and sends His son
The Son lays down His life for all
He lavishes His love upon us
He calls us now, His sons and daughters
He’s reaching out…

Chorus
His love is deep, His love is wide
And it covers us
His love is fierce, His love is strong
It’s furious
His love is sweet, His love is wild
And it’s waking hearts to life

… and its waking hearts to life
He is waking hearts to life
He is waking hearts to life

Your love is deep, Your love is wide
And it covers us
Your love is fierce, Your love is strong
It’s furious
Your love is sweet, Your love is wild
And it’s waking hearts to life

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Confessions of a Junkie

| Mommakisses

It’s true. I can not deny it. It started when I was but a child. I am a junkie. And it shows when you shuffle my iPod. Duran Duran. Third Day. Journey. Francesca Battistelli. Elvis Presley. Gary Chapman. Hall & Oates. Cece Winans. Rosemary Clooney. Rich Mullins. Whitesnake. Tenth Avenue North. I could go on. I love the beat of a fun drum. The pulse of a driving guitar. The tickling of the ivories, even if they are electric.

Once, I would have told you it didn’t matter what I listened to. And when I was younger, that may have been true. However, two things happened. Maybe three. 1) For the most part, I don’t like country. Yes, I grew up in Wyoming. Yes, I live in Nashville. Go figure. 2) I became a Christian. 3) I got married.

The first two are pretty self-evident. You will find very little country on my iPod. Or in my CDs. Or in my cassettes. Or even in my LPs. (Yes, I still have LPs. For that matter, I still have a couple 8tracks, but that’s another blog.) There are the occasional hits or artists, but mostly, I’m a no country zone. Number 2 we will come back to.

Number 3 is where I learned much about me. My loving hubby also has a wide taste in music, only his taste is very different than mine. He will listen to anything that is hip, just to see what other people like about this or that. And that drives me a little bit crazy. He also will listen to instrumentals, which I can do for a little while, but I get bored. He also likes foreign music. Namely Japanese anime music. And this is where I realized something deep within the heart of me:

I am not a music junkie. I am a word junkie. I should have known this to be the case… I was the child that sat by the tape player and stopped and wrote down every word and then played again and wrote down more before the lyrics were included. Once that became the norm, I read EVERY WORD to EVERY SONG.

When I became a Christian, what was being said began to really matter to me. Not just lyrically, but what the overall message was. Was it hopeful? Was it glorifying man or Christ? Give me a good story with a draw to who Christ is, and I was hooked! Give me a song I can’t understand, and I’m OUT. And if it translates to talking about princesses and pudding… I’m gone.

I find myself now introducing music to my kids… yes, I still play the stuff I grew up with, but when there is no life in the words, I’m finding less and less life in the music. I find myself starting songs for them and then saying… ugh… next… I find I go back to the ones with really great lyrics more than the ones I once found to be a “fun” song.

I guess even a junkie can change.