from the heart

Just a week or two ago, Pam Fusting, the director of children's ministries at our church, asked me to drop by the beginning of the Sunday school hour to talk to the children. She said that they were doing a series on discipleship and she wanted me to share with them what it meant, to me, to be a disciple of Christ. Such a simple question, right? But as I thought it over, I hardly knew where to begin!

How could I begin to capture how it was that I started to follow Jesus and all that He means to me? My story, of course, begins before I was born. God spared me from harm while I was still in my mother's womb. He carried me when I had open-heart surgery and later when my heart broke over my parents' divorce. From way back then to today, God has continually blessed and sustained me through all of the ups and downs of life.

I seriously had no clue how I could possibly encapsulate all of those ideas in a 2-4 minute talk, in front of the children. And then it struck me----of course! I needed to write a song! And so, I did. It was nothing fancy; I kept it plain and simple. And the kids liked it!
It started like this:

Before I was born, God saw me.

Inside my mom, he formed me.

He kept me safe from harm,

before I was born.

When I sang it later for the worship team, they really liked it, too, and they suggested that we unveil it for a future baptismal Sunday. It made me happy because I hadn't sweated over the song it all. I was just sharing my heart!

The cool thing is, I'm surrounded by people doing the same. This past week, my daughter wrote a song as part of an assignment for her English class. (It turned out great!) My friend Jacque, on the worship team, has written a beautiful song that we are going to sing on Easter Sunday. And Alan, also on the worship team, has written some excellent music for several original songs that we hope to include on a cd project that we're putting together to celebrate the church's centennial!

I'm getting a kick out of all of these creative juices flowing out, all over the place! Lately, I've even written up some lyrics for a couple of country songs. (Watch out, Taylor Swift! ;) I doubt they'll make the cut for our cd project, but, nevertheless, I'm going to keep on sharing my heart... (Hey, that sounds like it could be a song title, doesn't it!?! ;)