Can't you just SAY it?? ? Singing Disaster

Its amazing what embarrassments parents can bring on a child.

As a teenager, singing was what I loved to do, and I felt that I was pretty good at it. When everything else was falling apart around me, no matter what happened, no matter how many times my sisters would make fun of me singing, (I almost quit singing because of the enormous amount of teasing my sisters did, making fun of my voice.  To my mother’s credit, she encouraged me there when no one else did; so I sang, despite my sisters teasing.) I felt good when I was singing, even when everything else was hard, and life seemed unfair, I could sing. I remember singing Billy Joel’s “My Life” over and over whenever I got punished and I was grounded to my room, or after I got beaten up. They might take what little freedom I had, but they couldn’t take my VOICE!

  I would sing in church frequently, not much as a teenager, but a lot as a young adult.                    

 When I would perform in front of people I would always pray before that and say, “Ok God, do whatever you want with my voice, take it and make it the way YOU want it to be- not the way I want it to be”, that way I wouldn’t be afraid and I knew my voice would be ok, no matter what my voice did it felt like that whatever happened, it was supposed to be that way.. It kinda took the pressure off of me, and gave it to the ultimate do gooder, if you know what I mean.

One year I had decided to do a song that had a speaking part in it, one for a woman, and one for a man. One was a woman talking about an experience with Christ; the other was of a “blind” man who had been healed by Christ.

I thought since my parents were right there, that I would ask them to do that part . ( I wasn’t living at home anymore, but went home when my dad wasn’t there to do laundry)  so I asked my mom if she would do the woman’s  part, and if she would ask my dad if he could do the man’s part.

I went through the song over and over, getting it ready. It’s a beautiful, peaceful song, talking about all the miracles that Jesus did.

The day came to sing the song in Church and I said the prayer I always did, asking him to take my voice and do with it what he wanted to do with it. And I felt calm. I got up and started singing.

My mom got up for her part, she did fine.

Then my dad got up by the podium. He didn’t stand at the microphone, like I had asked him to.

He stood way off to the side of me. He literally SCREAMED at the audience  “I WAS BLIND, BUT NOW I SEE!” AND WITH MORE THAN JUST MY EYES…I THANK GOD HE CAME!!!!!!”

He might as well of  just punched the front row parishioners right in the face the way they were leaning WAAAAY back in their seats looking like they’d just been assaulted.:p

 I was SO embarrassed.

And THAT was the last time I ever asked for his help with a song.