A Lifetime Ago

I don’t feel that old very often, until I start thinking about how long ago things happened.

Nearly eleven years ago, I met Chris. I was 17, and he was 22.

We met through music – he was this awesome and passionate singer/guitar player/pianist/keyboard player/songwriter. I was still a teenager and a good-guitar-player-but-only-in-my-classical-picking-style-so-please-don’t-ask-me-to-strum-niche and a passable-but-nothing-special singer. I was attracted to his personality, his passion for God, AND his musical abilities.

We became friends, then best friends, then started dating (during which he wrote romantic and not-at-all-cheesy songs for me), then got engaged, then got married…all the way through, music was our most common thread – what our relationship always went back to. From playing in a band together, to leading music for our Church’s Junior High Group for many years (which included many date-night practices),
to playing on the Church praise team, to playing around a campfire on camping trips….
It all centered around music.

A few years into our marriage, we went to a very small recording studio and made a rough recording of a few of his original songs. We both played guitar and sang on the recording, so it took quite a while to get it all down. It was a really fun experience – one that neither of us will ever forget.

Then, life got busy, we had a baby, jobs got busy, parenting got busy, our lives started centering around new things, and music faded into the background. We shamefully went over a year without even opening our guitar cases.

Now, music is taking on a different role in our lives, as we pass it on to Ali. Sure – we’re doing a lot more of “Jesus Loves Me” and “If You’re Happy and You Know It” than original compositions, but at least once every couple of weeks, we get out our guitars or sit around the piano with her and teach her to love music as much as we do.

However, I got a bit reminiscent the other day and dug out our sample CD. I played it in the car for Ali to hear, and as much as she is insistent on listening to her music and ONLY her music continuously and without a single stinkin’ break for breathing, she was mesmerized. She kept repeating over and over, “That’s Mommy and Daddy singing. That’s MY Mommy and Daddy singing…I wanna listen to it again!”

For once, we agreed on music. I wanted to listen to it again too.

If you’d like to listen to Chris’ songs also, here are a couple of songs from the CD, roughly recorded (and you might need to max out your volume to hear them), circa 2004:

All music © 1999 Broken Moon Music.