I loved these songs and also the hymns we sang in our little church, located right in the middle of our village in Einlage, Neuland Colony, Paraguay. I clearly recall singing at the top of my lungs one day when my mother told me I should stop singing because I didn't know how to sing properly. She was probably annoyed because there was always a lot of racket with seven noisy children swarming around her while she was longing for some peace and quiet.
But the message I understood was that I couldn't sing.
I believed it because mothers know everything (at least that is what you think when you are a small child!).
As a result of my mother's criticism, I decided that if I couldn't sing I would do other things and I would do them very well. And so I became an overachiever and a person desperately afraid of failure. I worried what people would think of me and that they would judge me unless I was perfect. I always received accolades and compliments for poems I memorized and recited on church holidays such as at Easter and Christmas. I had no stage fright until we came to Canada and I discovered I spoke with an accent.
People at church were not accustomed to long recitations in German and, sensitive as I was to failure, I could feel them mocking me. Later on, in high school, I had problems with geometry. My mathematics teacher was one who loved to call his students to the board and ridicule them when they failed to understand what he was asking them to do. At the time I didn't realize that it was he who was a failure as a teacher and not I as a student!
Failure is a feeling long before it becomes an actual result. It's vulnerability that breeds self-doubt and then is escalated, often deliberately, by fear, writes Michelle Obama in her book Becoming: A Guided Journal for Discovering Your Voice (based on her best selling memoir Becoming).
I did sing in church choirs as a young person, always making sure to stand beside my friends Donna or Katie who had strong alto voices, as I did not think I could harmonize on my own.
Just recently, in one of her sermons, our middle daughter talked about all the music we had in our home when she and her siblings were growing up. "Someone was always singing or playing an instrument or listening to music," she noted.
It surprised me, in a pleasant sort of way, because I have never considered myself musical although I love to sing. I found my voice again as a young mother. My mother's songs all came back to me. Babies who needed soothing did not criticize. Their father, Hardy, also loves to sing and often played his mouth organ. Our oldest is a natural songbird and when her teacher told me she had perfect pitch, something inside me glowed. The three siblings often sang together. I have a distinct memory of a fellow missionary "auntie" teaching them Peace is Flowing like a River and how much they loved singing it. During home leaves, they sang in the churches we visited. When my mother heard them singing, she was moved to tears. For me this was an unexpected and loving gift from God.
I just finished reading my blogger friend Marian Beaman's memoir Mennonite Daughter: The Story of a Plain Girl. Without bitterness or malice, she shares about some very painful things that happened to her at the hands of people close to her who should have supported rather than punished her. We all make mistakes, even with the best intentions. And there is forgiveness. And there is healing in telling our story.
Michelle Obama again: If you don't see that your story matters, chances are no one else will either. So even though it isn't always easy, it's important for you to find the strength to share your truth, because the world needs to hear it.
