My grandmother told me years ago it was important to know hymns by heart and also to know the liturgies of the Moravian Church, the denomination in which Chris and I both grew up. Truthfully, I remember taking great pride in not needing a hymnal by my adolescent years. In college, however, I was introduced to the concepts that worship needed to be dynamic and organic and changing, so it was new and reinventing itself all the time. This way of thinking kept being hammered at me in seminary as well. And time and again I heard how important it was basically to re-imagine worship, as if the church had to repackage God because He was antiquated for today's people. And that memorization seemed devalued somehow.
In the past few years, however, I have realized more and more that those hymns that were drilled into my head and those liturgies of Psalms that Sunday after Sunday became more ingrained in spirit and are the very impulse of my being.
Tomorrow is Chris' surgery. Up to this point, the sum total of this family's hospital experience is this: Eric, seven days in NICU at birth, Leigh, day surgery one time, Emily, appendectomy, after which Valley tossed us out at less than eighteen hours inpatient and Chris...nothing before tomorrow. We're lightweights at this!!
That said...thank you Grandmother!! Those hymns ARE important and not needing a hymnal comes in handy. Chris learned the very same hymns. And THAT is where we are this morning, butterflies in our tummies but hymns in our hearts. As I type this, Chris has fallen back asleep, Eric is resting off a cold, Emily is in class and each of us knows that God is God and we are not. And there are hymns in our hearts and there surely will be tomorrow as well.
Grace for your journey,
Leigh
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