Posterity

My heart is singing!  My daughter confided a secret to me in a hushed voice over the phone yesterday.  With a dramatic pause, she told me she had discovered my teen granddaughter can sing!  Oh, I remember that feeling when I recognized she herself could sing at about age 12!   "Mama, she sounds just like me!" she intoned unbelievingly.

"But I thought she could always sing!" I exclaimed.  "She sings in youth choir!"  Then she told me her daughter says she only lip-syncs in choir!  Ooh, shades of when her mother was young and too shy to sing in public without my prodding.  My daughter has a lovely voice, with many saying she was their favorite singer...when you could get her to do it.  I must admit she has overcome most of her voice-shyness by now, unlike the times she used to get stomach aches when  she performed.

"How did you find out she could sing?" I asked.  Amy said she actually knew it when her little girl was four years old; she recognized a special quality in her voice.

"But I hadn't heard her sing in 10 years!  She's  been hiding it!"  She said she would not have found out, but her daughter had gone into her bedroom and recorded a novelty song popular among her friends.  "She didn't want us to hear it, and only did it to let us know she had learned the words," Amy explained. 

How exciting!  My granddaughter is not only beautiful, smart, and accomplished in sports, but now I find she is musically talented as well!  Well, only her mother will be able to relate, understand her hesitance, and help her develop this gift.

Why do kids do this?  I still remember when this grandchild was four years old and in VBS.  Her sweet face scowled at the audience at the commencement program, and I was convinced she didn't get a thing out of Vacation Bible School.  The theme had been "Brave Believers," taken from heroes of the Bible such as Daniel, The Three Hebrew Children, and other well-known personages. 

Then one day she, her mother and baby sister were in our pasture when  the horses began galloping full speed toward them.  Amy picked up the toddler and raced for the gate, then turned and saw the 4-year-old holding a big stick up in front of the horses and the horses coming to a sudden stop right in front of her!  When asked how she did that, she replied matter-of-factly, "I'm a brave believer!"

This is also the child who completed her training in "White Horse Riders" Bible program at age 10 so she could go on a mission trip with those who qualified to an Indian tribe in New Mexico.  Her first trip on an airplane, she has flown many times since, most recently on a trip to France last summer.  Her world is expanding.  How will God use her?  I will wait and see, praying.