Gospodi Pomiluji

I apologize if this picture is making you all covet my maroon choir robe.  Just look away if the envy is eating you up.  And the haircut?!?  Wow.  Yikes.  I was kind of trying to avoid having to share that glaring mistake of my past, but hey, it was a safe, definitely not too attractive of a look for visiting prisons. 

As I scan over these faces,  so many memories come flooding in.  There is no good place to start and I'm afraid this post would never end, so I'll spare you all the details of how life changing these choir experiences were for me and write instead about how I've turned into my mother.  I try hard, anyway, and I don't cringe when I say that.  I boast it.  She is quite the woman.

Of course I haven't always felt this way.  I'd cringe when my friends in elementary school were talking about songs on the radio, and thanks to my limited yet somehow broad exposure to music (thanks to my mom),  I wasn't sounding too cool when I asked them if the Mormon Tabernacle Choir was a band or if they had ever heard the lyrics to the Russian song, Gospodi Pomiluji.  I may or may not have also tried to sound hip by asking them if they had heard of the "group," The Scripture Scouts.  The moonwalk, that was from their music video, right?   Anyway, you get the sad, sad picture.

And what have I learned from all this childhood humiliation?  Guess what you'll find on repeat in my car?  Beautiful  acapella choirs singing moving prayers in the most amazing of harmonies.  And I can't even help myself but make a comment out loud to Russell and Rylee when the music sends chills down my spine.  What do you know?  Just. Like. My. Mother. 

(I don't think I begin the comments with golly, though.  I've still got quite a way to go there!)