I grew up in church. From the time I was five years old, my childhood days were filled with church activities: camp at Wolf Creek, "training union" (then Discipleship Training), Sunday School, VBS, and Mission Friends/Girls in Action. But my most favorite church activity HAD to be Children's Choir. The first musical I performed in was "God's Kids." I was five. And I was hooked. We had the coolest shirts with our names on the back in Rainbow reflector letters. Amazingly awesome for the mid-1970s! We traveled all over LA (Lower Arkansas) singing at other churches. It was so much fun.
"Miss" Lucy was our director. She was dedicated heart and soul to children's choir. She was a great encourager to all kids and always found some part for each child who wanted it. I had lots of speaking parts - imagine that! There are SO many times throughout my life that songs from one of the MANY musicals will pop into my head - seemingly out of nowhere. The songs are all Biblically based and they are stored in my heart. What a HUGE blessing.
One song was called the "clock song" - "Don't let your face be 7:25 looking like a frown . . . let it shine like 10 after 10 - like a great big happy clown!"
To this day I sing these songs from time to time. "I Am a Promise" comes to mind when I am singing to my boys. I remind them God has a plan for their lives and "you are a promise, you are a possibility, you are a promise, with a capital P, you are a great big bundle of POTENTIALITY!" I can still remember - pretty much word for word my speaking part in that song in particular: " . . . you may have holes in your tennis shoes or freckles on your nose. But it doesn't matter one bit. God's got something very special in mind for you. It might be climbing high mountains or ?, helping sick people get well or singing a song! Whatever it is . . . you can do it!" The years have robbed me of a few words - but you get the idea!There was also:
Music Machine - "Music Machine, Music Machine, like no other gadget that you've ever seen; whatever you want to sing about, just put something in it and a song comes out"
and a couple "Psalty, The Singing Song Book" musicals with songs like "Don't build your house on the sandy land, don't build it to near the shore . . . well it might look kind of nice, but you'll have to build it twice, oh you'll have to build house once more."
Too much fun.
