Just call me Liz!

Today in sacrament meeting, the ward choir got to sing 4 songs that I picked. For those that are not aware of this, I am my ward's choir director. When I was initially issued this call of service, I dreaded that I would be stuck in this calling forever... our ward has a tendency to do that. But after today, I can see why my mother has enjoyed a lifetime of directing Christmas programs for church.

The songs we sang included: Sally Deford's, "And His Name Shall Be Called Wonderful"; a sweet melody line and my group sounded great. "If this Child were Born Today"; again, another nice melody with parts of "The First Noel" and "Away in a Manger" thrown on top of it here and there. A hymplicity version of "Oh, Come all Ye Faithful"; meh, not my favorite, but it was good to toss it in to the mix. And lastly, Craig Petrie's arrangement of "Silent Night." This was by far my favorite and it sounded better today than it ever has.

Our sacrament meeting program was great. The bishop had asked two young mothers in our ward to speak and they both did an excellent job. Jocelyn's talk kept making me cry, which was just killing me! Then, before we sang "Silent Night," the bishop stood up to make some remarks about charity and how it is the pure love of Christ. He mentioned the part of "Silent Night" where it says, "son of God, love's pure light," and how blessed we are to have His love. Well, we got up to sing the song and everything was going along PERFECTLY!! Then we got to the best part... the last verse where we sing "son of God, love's pure light" and I totally lost it. The choir sounded so beautiful, the Spirit was so strong, the tears started flowing and I couldn't even sing with them (I did keep my arms moving, though!). Unfortunately, I have a couple criers in the choir and I felt AWFUL for making it harder for them to keep it together! Embarassingly, my mascara was everywhere... oh well!

The reason I labelled this post, "Just call me Liz" is because my mom has done this so many times! I have watched my mom lead the choir most of my life and as I direct MY choir, I channel her a lot (as well as all my other past choir directors, but mostly her). I know I hold my hands the same way, move my arms the same and cut them off the same as she does. This was the first time, though, that I started crying hard enough to barely finish the song! Thanks, Mom, for teaching me so much about music, but no thanks for passing down the "crying boob" gene!

I wanted to say, though, that I'm so grateful for this chance to lead the choir. Today was so fulfilling for me. I've had TONS more support from the ward members this fall/winter and I love being able to work with talented singers. I know there are so many more out there in the ward, and I'd beg and plead if it would help to get them to come sing with me, but I understand that we are all really busy. It's not easy adding one more appointment/responsibility (especially on Sunday) when we all have so much going on, but I couldn't be more grateful to those who come despite all this. I'm grateful to have an amazing accompanist who can play everything I throw at him with ZERO notice. Jay Butterfield is a member of our bishopric and it is such a blessing to me that he offers us his talent at the piano. He is one of the best examples of selfless service that I know. I'm also grateful that Paul often will pick up the slack on performance days when it should be my turn to teach the sunday school lesson to our primary class. I intended to teach today without even looking at the lesson manual first (he's taught the last two lessons), but he sat down with the book and the class and took care of it. He also let me take a super long nap after church today because I wasn't feeling well. I sure love my sweetie! He amazes me, too!

So, I hope you all had a great Christmasy Sabbath day, like I did. So far, this Christmas has probably been my very most favorite!