Note from Janel: This week I’m vacating with my family–or soon attempting to, after the errands are finished and we sink into full-on celebration mode.
So I’m sliding in these thoughts, most originally published three years ago, which have followed me around like a pet pig.
I grew up amidst a small, tidy farm in central Illinois. The colors that primarily swirl in my memory are the rustling greenness that stretched in acres of corn or soybeans on every side, or the grass that could only be truly experienced through one’s toes. The affectionately flaking bright red of the barn stands tall in my mind, along with the mottled red of the apple trees, the streaked pink of rhubarb stems, the buttery yellow (and a peeping cacophony) of baby chicks. And there’s the white of our ancient farmhouse trimmed neatly with black shutters. Farms have their own simple beauty.
In all its celebration of the best, Christmas still has a way of exposing…reality.
Take last Wednesday. The goal: 12 canning jars of sand-art brownies for my kids’ teachers. And of course, to make a memory.
But as I’ve mentioned before, sometimes my memory-making can go a little differently than I saw it going in my head. In this case, I struggled to hear Pandora’s Christmas music above, oh, my children yelling at each other. (And, uh, me raising my voice back.) And my cries of “Don’t eat that! You don’t want to give your teachers the gift of sickness! Go wash your hands with soap!”
On my father’s side, my family carries a long tradition of music, particularly in amateur a capella. My husband jokes about that time when he first took a road trip with my family, and we started singing in the car—with all the choral parts. He may have felt a bit bewildered. He still says that when all my extended family sings Happy Birthday, it’s something to behold. (It is! They sent it to me on video for my birthday this year. I was in harmonic heaven.)
So I sing now, by myself—while I wash the dishes, or as I plod along on the guitar I’m learning; the acoustics in my concrete house are pretty sweet. And I sing particularly when I’m happy, my husband has noticed.
But of course, when I want to do good, evil is right there with me. Though, sure, God gets a big kick out of skillful music, I get a little into myself at times—to the rich sound reverberating off the walls, even to my own fantasies. (I know. Ugh.) Let’s just say the “worship” swivels its focus a bit.
![Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language](https://www.janelbreitenstein.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/love-languages-text-1.jpg "Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language")
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