I’m frequently surprised by what I’m grateful for if I’ll just stop and pay attention. Today my surprising gratitude is for hymns and the comfort they bring me.

I don’t know how many of you grew up singing hymns every Sunday in church. And I don’t know how many of you had parents who sang in the house, like mine.

When I was a child those songs were everywhere, not just at church in the Baptist Hymnal.

My Grandma Ayres hummed “In the Garden” while she mixed her German Chocolate Cake for Sunday lunch. Granny Terry sang “I’ll Fly Away” or “The Old Rugged Cross” as she puttered around the garden, setting tomato plants in Folger’s cans.

Dad would come into the kitchen early in the morning, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” coming through the room in his sweet baritone. Sometimes I’d catch mom in a verse of “I Know Whom I Have Believed,” while she washed dishes.

My mother had six sisters, and they all began life in the Church of Christ, where there were no musical instruments. There was no piano, so they read music and sang in perfect harmony. The older girls were in demand at funerals and weddings, where they’d sometimes sing with their daddy, a tall, taciturn, blue-eyed man they called Papa, someone who hardly spoke a word but who sang all the time.

My cousin David sings bass at the Logan Baptist Church, Mom always commenting that it’s just like hearing and watching Papa sing all over again. 

I have those songs in my head. They’re a gift.

Twenty years ago when I was leaving a badly broken marriage, packing the few things I could carry in a small U-Haul trailer, far from home, I sang hymns to myself. “Sweet Hour of Prayer” got me through Johanna’s room. Thankfully she was away for a couple of weeks and didn’t know I’d have to give her pet bunny to the kids next door. I cried a lot that week and the problem of the bunny worried me most.

I wasn’t bothered nearly as much by the fact that I was leaving most of what I owned there. Or that I was divorcing my third spouse, a man who thought I was less valuable than another day of drinking himself into a stupor.

I sat on the floor sobbing, wishing I was in New Mexico rather than North Carolina. I only stopped crying when I remembered the words to “How Great Thou Art,” knowing I was headed home to people who knew the words to all those songs that were comforting me.

This morning my Chama friend Maria sent the daily devotional she sends every day to dozens of her friends. It’s a paragraph text, some days only three or four sentences. She has no idea what a gift she’s giving each of us.

Maria sent a phrase that reminded me of “I Know Whom I have Believed” (and I am persuaded that he is able…). I went about the kitchen preparing the pork roast for the crock pot, thinking about that song and about Granny Terry in her little kitchen in Tucumcari, singing those words.

I was fourteen when my Granny Terry died. That evening she patted the bed where she sat propped against the headboard. “Crawl on up here with me,” she said, and we lay there together while my parents and aunts and uncles talked in the living room, trying to decide whether to take her to the hospital. “Sing with me sweetie,” she said, trying to catch her breath, and then she started a slow verse of “Will There Be Any Stars in My Crown.” It’s a moment I’ll never forget.

These days, my mom swears there are angels in her house, that sometimes the music box all the grandkids plays with will randomly start playing at the moment she most needs comfort. I believe her, mostly because if anyone gets angels to live with them, it would be my folks. And the thing that would comfort her the best would be music.

Hymns still float through my head, which is no different than it’s been every day of my life. This world I get to live in is a gift. I have Toby, who is both calming and exciting every second, finally The Great Love Of My Life. All of our kids are happy and healthy. There are grandsons who are a surprising delight.

My parents are still here. At almost 89, my dad is slower and more likely to nap than attack a project. His days of overhauling a tractor or a 1967 Ford pickup are over. My mom watches over him. He does the same for her.

And they still sing.

Like the aunts and uncles and grandparents before them, they’ve given those of us in my generation the gift of words like, “and He walks with me and He talks with me and He tells me I am His own. And the joy we share as we tarry there, none there has ever known,” (from “In the Garden”)

“In the Garden” is one of the songs I sing to Baby Milo to get him to sleep.

I sang it to Nolan and Jake when they were babies. Perhaps in twenty years or more, those little boys will sing the same songs to their babies. I hope they’re as comforted then as I have been by those words.

Find your own comfort today. I don’t know what your songs are. Hymns may not conjure up comfort for you. So sing a song you learned in a place where you felt strong and happy and secure.

Let gratitude surprise you. And let music comfort you.

Thanks for checking in.