“I was happily singing.”
The words drifted from the backseat in petulant tones as only a put-out four-year-old could utter them.
My laughter bubbled out as the words permeated our vehicle with the same petulance for a second time.
“I was happily singing.”
Nothing about the complaint seemed to indicate much happiness of singing.
It struck me as altogether funny.
The thing was, it’s all too real.
I wasn’t exactly sure what had upset a certain four-year-old’s apple cart. But, oh, did I know the feeling! How many times am I happily {fill in the blank} until {you/they / circumstances / any other number of vexing details/fill in another blank} happens along with the sole intent of disrupting my happy. Now, most of us don’t have to be much of an adult to realize the previous sentence holds a whole lot of exaggeration in it. It simultaneously also holds a whole lot of truth about the way we sometimes feel events are happening in our lives.
Believe me, I would much rather blame my circumstances than face up to my own discontent and lack of steadfast trust in Him who says He knows what’s best for me.
A later conversation revealed the unwelcome intrusion to such happy singing.A helpful mama who has cared for, fed, taught, and protected for every bit of these four years, had simply leaned over with a suggestion of more words that went with the song being sung.
This helpfulness was viewed as an unwelcome intrusion. Affronted and aggrieved, the only thought and focus the little songbird could give was on how happily the song had been going.
It still makes me laugh every time I think of it. It’s going to be my new catchphrase. Every time something or someone hits my most sensitive, {or let’s be honest,} least sensitive self I will readily adopt petulant tones and proclaim, “I was singing happily.”
The thing is, I too often look like this. I think it might be that God shakes his head sometimes and says, “Dear girl, I was simply offering you more words to sing. There’s another verse. There’s a beautiful chorus. You don’t have to say stuck here. That next verse and that next verse and that next verse – they hold encouragement and peace and hope and opportunities for learning and growing and knowing me better. I don’t interrupt your happy singing to knock you off tune. I don’t intrude on joyous notes to give you pause. I sing over you myself and my heart for you is to draw you further up and further in.”
Perhaps the shepherds in the field were humming a tune. Perhaps, they had a full-out song going around their campfire. Maybe they liked to pick up the newborn lambs and sing over them. What, if when the angels showed up with the best news ever and the absolute most magnificent music ever heard, the shepherds would have turned and stopped up their ears, glared at the heavens, and shouted back “We were happily singing.”
They could have missed it.
Instead, they embraced it.
They listened! They received it!
And they began to sing it back.
They welcomed new words, the Word, come down to a weary world. They took this happiest song and sang it to everyone they met.
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