Baby Song

Allow me to brag a little bit.

My daughter sings. She sang to me this afternoon before her nap.

She sang to me while I was watching her, like a hawk. You she, she has a scrape on her face that my wife rubs ointment on and covers with a band-aid - doctor's instructions to pulverize the bacteria and ward off a potential infection. I had to watch my daughter while she was in her swing to make sure she didn't rip the band-aid off her face and devour it, the ointment and the bacteria. Not an easy task, believe me.

She lifted her heavenly-brown eyes to her captor/protector and sang. No words of course, she's just learning her consonants. But her little voice rose and fell, freely skipping along notes she herself picked out for a song that she wrote. The tune fell lightly, like a Rocky Mountain brook, flowing with freedom and logic between rock and stone. It was unmistakably a song.

My mother-in-law observed she loves music, however she perceives it in her little developing mind. I have sang to her since we were first aware of her existence, gently singing hymns through my wife's belly and then, how happy, directly to her face. In the first couple of months, the best way to get her to calm down was to hold her and sing, "Come Thou Found of Every Blessings," tapping her back in rhythm as I walked through our little apartment.

Now, she returns the favor. She looked right at me and sang her song. Unmistakably a song, but unmistakably praise as well. Whether she was aware of it or not, she praised God, joining the trees visible out the window right behind her, and the thunder I hear as I write this. The heavens declare the glory of the Lord, and in her own, little baby way, on this Sunday, she joined in.

I could not help but sing back. I sang a lullaby called "Oh How He Loves You and Me." It goes like this:

Oh how he loves you and me

Oh how he loves you and me

He gave his life, what more could he give?

Oh how he loves you

Oh how he loves me

Oh how he loves you and me

My mother would rock me in a big, leather office chair and sing that song to me. It's among my earliest memories. My mother once told me that my most-requested song during those times was "Away in a Manger." But "Oh How He Loves You and Me" is the one that stuck with me. It took root in the fertile soil of a child's heart and remained. I suspect it was the song God wanted me to remember. I pray that my daughter remembers it too.