A Challenge

When I was about eleven years old I made my first album... Okay, my only album. And I guess it wasn't really mine, so much.  So there was a man at our church who was an entertainer. He went to churches and kids birthday parties and did magic tricks and sang with his puppet, Hezekiah - you local people probably know who I'm talking about because he is still at it today! Anyway, he decided to make an album that he could sell at his events, and he enlisted me and several other kids to sing with him.  All of the songs on the album were scripture set to tunes that he wrote. I remember going into the recording studio and feeling like the famous singer I knew I was destined to be - but that's not what this blog is going to be about...

I also remember that he had given us a sheet with all the "lyrics" typed out for us to memorize beforehand so that it would be easier for us to pick up the songs on recording day. Memorization... Oh what a struggle it was! Not because I wasn't capable of doing it, but because there are just so many more interesting things to spend your time doing when you are eleven years old!

But that day, in the recording studio, something magical happened.  He put those verses to music, and suddenly it became easy to memorize them. In my musical mind, the tune made the words easy to remember, they made sense. So much so that now today, 28 years later, when I hear one of those verses that we sang I can still remember them, word for word, if I sing them.

Maybe music isn't your thing - but everybody has something in their life that helps with memorization. I remember in high school and college I had teachers/professors that would suggest mnemonic devices to help us study and retain information. Things such as acronyms, rhymes, and acrostics. They would also suggest things involving all of your senses like wearing the same comfortable clothes each time you studied, eating the same snack, or playing the same quiet music in the background.

It occurs to me that as I've gotten older, I haven't tried to memorize much. As kids in Sunday school, we had memory verses every week. In school we had deposited new things into the information bank in our minds daily. But as an adult, other than a few favorite song lyrics, and maybe a couple of recipes, there is just nothing new being added to the library in my head.

I have always admired my mom because in every situation, she is able to recall some scripture that is relevant. Other than the few verses that I remember from the songs, I have very little scripture memorized. In this day and age, it doesn't seem as necessary because I can google "scripture about wonderfully made" and my computer will tell me that I am looking for Psalm 139, and then I can read it. I even have an app for that on my phone. But in a time when there are so many ugly things going on around us every day, I have started to notice how much all that negativity can impact my mood. And I was thinking, if I worked on memorizing verses that are important to me - things that can uplift rather than tear down - then I am taking back the control over what kinds of materials are being filed away in MY library.

So I am challenging myself. I woke up this morning with "fearfully and wonderfully made" running through my head.  I'm not sure why it was in my mind, but who am I to question God's intentions? I got on here and googled the verse and found Psalm 139.  I read the entire chapter and found that it holds so many wonderful reminders for me, not to mention one of those songs that was on my first album! "Search me oh God, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there be any hurtful way in me. And lead me in the everlasting way." (That was paraphrased from Psalm 139: 23-24)

I already have the last two verses memorized, so I have a head start... My challenge is to memorize all of Psalm 139. I'm not setting a time limit for myself because I am much older now then I was when I memorized the last two verses, so I'm not sure what my daily capacity for memorization is now! But I will study it daily, and I will commit it to memory. And maybe this will be just the beginning for me. Maybe I will start to file away more of God's words and promises, and less of the ugliness in the world. And maybe this will make a change in my life.

How will you change YOUR life today?

Mondegreens

My kids love listening to music. They love to sing! And the funny thing is, when they sing, they do it with all their hearts, belting out the words as though they understand the emotion behind every lyric. Even when they don't quite get the meaning or the lyrics right... The other day the kids wanted to listen to one of my 80's collections, and in the middle of Bonnie Tyler's heart-wrenching ballad, Total Eclipse of the Heart, my three-year-old asks me, "Mommy, how can a girl that's all grown up fall apart?" While trying to explain what that meant to her, I was transported back to my childhood, and my understanding of some of my favorite songs at the time.

"I'm not Lisa. My name is Julie. Lisa left you years ago. My eyes are not blue, but mine won't leave you..." Okay, so obviously this song was about a blind man, and for years nobody bothered to tell the poor guy that his old girlfriend had left and he had a new girlfriend who didn't have blue eyes - right?

Oh, and how about that good old Steve Miller song, "Bingo Jet had a light on"? Who knew that there was a whole jet made for playing bingo on? Awesome!

And poor Kenny Rogers and his 400 children. What was Lucille thinking?

And not quite a misunderstanding of the lyrics, but just simply having no idea what this song was about... I can remember walking in circles around a pole at Kmart singing repeatedly, "That't the way, uh huh uh huh, I like it, uh huh uh huh,"while my mom was in the check out line.  She was mortified and begged me to stop singing that song. I really didn't understand why.

Of course it was always curious to me how Dire Straits got their "Money for nothing and your checks for free" in a time long before free checking came about.

I never did understand what the lyrics to this oldie meant, "Bob bob bob, bob bob a ran..." Why was Bob running, and did he have a stutter?

Then there were a couple of songs that my sister and I intentionally changed the words to because we thought it was funny. One of my favorites was the Copacabana... You remember it, "Her name was Julie, she was a floozy..." (Keep in mind, this was long before I really even knew what a floozy was, and I just thought it was funny because it made my sister mad!) The other one I cannot repeat in it's entirety because no matter how I try to spin it as an adult, it will never seem as innocent as it actually was when sung by 5 and 8 year old girls... But it was an Abba song, and it started with, "The wiener takes it all..."

I think my favorite one though, is one that my oldest child sang at the tops of his lungs while listening to the radio in the van one day a few years ago. You have probably heard the song, Breathe, by Anna Nalick.  Only, his version of the lyrics are what you might call a Freudian slip? Because according to his young mind, the chorus of the song was, "Pray, just pray..." I loved this "misunderstanding", because from the mouth of my babe, I was reminded that no matter what is going on, there is one simple thing that I can do that will help me through any situation. And still to this day, when I hear this song, I smile when I think of my little boy's sage advice.

"Pray without ceasing..." I Thessalonians 5:17