The [Light] Through Her Eyes

Today, some friends and I had the chance to go a local old folks home, and sing a few songs. We walked in and visited with them for a small second. While I was looking for the attendant to check in, a man who was not all there walked up to me. He was lost and didn’t know where to go. I knew right off that he was suffering from dementia, and was not who he used to be. I didn’t exactly know how to help him, so I showed him to a seat on the couch and let him rest. We got all the details squared away, and started singing.

I have always been such a huge believer in the power of music (lets be real, I could go on all day about it) but as we sang it was such a sweet spirit that filled that facility. As the notes came out of me in a way they haven’t for a long time, I felt myself testifying of these truths intertwined in the text of some of my favorite hymns. My heart folded into its self as I felt the presence of the Spirit of God stronger than I have in a long time.

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched an elderly couple who had caught my attention when I first walked in. It was again obvious to me that she struggled with memory loss, and she was not all there to say the least. But her faithful husband was at her side. He was in good health, and probably did not need to stay there, but as a sacrifice to the love those two strangers shared, he stayed by her side night and day. My heart started to show its feeling and the engines in my tear ducts turned over and the turbines took flight. I had to work overtime to refrain from being overrun with tears. I held strong through the rest of the song, and kept the tears at bay.

But that was soon to change. The request was made to sing, “I Am A Child of God.” Again, my eyes flicked to this lovely couple in the corner. As we sang the first song, her eyes came a live again, for what seemed like the first time in a long time. A beautiful light came into her face, and upon seeing this, her loving husbands countenance made a similar change. She was there again.

The beautiful truths taught in that song were enough to crush through the mortal weakness her body was being subjected to, and reach through to the beautiful spirit that made up her soul. A spirit which was reminded that very minute of something it had always known. She was a child of God. She had been sent here. And she could return.

I was pushed over the edge and the words I know to be true from the bottom of my zebra striped toes were drowning as I choked back tender tears. I think it would serve us all well to remember those things. The light we have BECAUSE we KNOW that God is our Father. Because we KNOW we can return to him. It is a truth that for myself, and many of you, has been presented to us since I was a little sunbeam. It was intertwined in every teaching that has penetrated my life for so long. It can be easy to overlook its significance. But its power is not diminished in the slightest merely by us thinking it so. So many are lost in this life, just as the man in the beginning was. But we don’t have to be. This truth helps us be found.

I hope that when people look at my face, that they can see that same light that flashed on this sweet sister’s face today. The light that screams, “I KNOW I AM A DAUGHTER OF GOD!” A light that proclaims His love to all the world. Through me.

Live in the light, my sweet friends.

-Jamie