In a house on Joyce Street just a few miles north of Waco, Texas, I wrote my very first songs.
While I was in seminary, wrestling with Greek and Hebrew vocabulary words, Jamie worked at the preschool at First Baptist Church of Waco. She was pregnant with our firstborn and would come home with smiles and swollen ankles and sit. The baby took her lack of early evening physical activity for an excuse to hold a dance party in between her ribcage and hip bones. So I wrote a prayer and a lullaby based on the scriptures I was studying.
Come to me
All you who are weary
Come to me
All you with heavy burdens
And I will give you rest
I will give you rest
Come to me
And I will give you rest
Lift up your soul
And I will be your shield
Lift up your soul
And I will be your refuge
And I will give you rest
I will give you rest
Lift up your soul
And I will give you rest
Peace, be still
And know that I am God
Peace, be still
And know that I am with you
And I will give you rest
I will give you rest
Peace, be still
And I will give you rest
Come to me
And I will give
You rest
The song seemed to work, the baby was pacified.
* * * * *
I was wearing a gray t-shirt that simply said “Baylor” written in green. I won the t-shirt in a long drive contest as part of a golf tournament. The nurse at the hospital gruffly instructed me to count to ten as Jamie pushed. I held Jamie’s hand and did as I was told. I counted to ten. And then I stopped.
“Don’t stop now, Baylor boy!” the nurse shouted at me. “Keep counting!” A couple more counts and Kaylea entered the world. She was cleaned and weighed and tested, then wrapped in a pink and blue blanket and handed to Jamie, then me. I was holding her for the very first time when the phone rang in our hospital room. It was my mother-in-law.
“How are things going?” she asked.
“Just holding my daughter,” I replied.
* * * * *
Six months after Kaylea was born, my now family of three plus a dog who knew some commands in Greek moved to Kansas City where I started my first position on staff at a church as the worship leader and youth minister. Kaylea grew up listening to me noodle and strum on the guitar most every day, figuring out chord progressions to songs, rearranging hymns, and composing new pieces for corporate worship. There were random dance parties including impromptu compositions of sheer silliness.
One December, she joined me on stage for a Christmas Eve service, crooning with a country twang, singing Happy Birthday, Jesus. The word “Jesus” got extra emphasis. The effort is recorded and replayed most Decembers for sheer entertainment. The following year, she sang an original introduction I wrote for O Holy Night.
She loved music with every fiber of her being.
* * * * *
At her preschool graduation, Kaylea was asked, “What do you want to do when you grow up?”
“I want to play violin in my daddy’s band,” she replied.
* * * * *
Kaylea was nervous for the honors choir tryouts at her elementary school. She gets nervous before every audition, every performance, and sometimes before lessons. She comes by it naturally. Even Simon Cowell would have encouraged her at this audition. She was invited to join the choir.
One day after school, she asked, “Dad, how do you hear and sing harmony parts?”
I’m a tenor. For my one year of choir in high school, harmony was pretty much the only thing I ever sang. That changed as a worship leader. I replied honestly and sarcastically, “I don’t. I sing melody.”
Kaylea committed to listening for harmony parts in whatever song she was listening to, which was mostly Carrie Underwood and One Direction, and practiced them on her own. Especially in the shower.
* * * * *
Mighty Henry calls her Violin. Sometimes, Violiny. It’s one of my favorite nicknames on the planet. If Kaylea ever has the opportunity to throw out a first pitch for the Royals and they design a special jersey for her, I hope she chooses her name to be Violin above her number. I know she’ll throw a strike, her arm’s in good shape. I don’t know what number she would choose.
* * * * *
My family moved from Kansas City to Springfield and I quit leading worship. Kaylea continued playing violin, playing in honors symphonies in middle school and high school. She did the hard work of learning scales and developing her ear for pitch and tuning. While in high school, she got an opportunity to start playing violin with the worship band at church. The musicians she worked with in the early Sunday morning practices taught her theory from a practical perspective, things she is now learning theoretically at college.
Around the same time, the church decided to start a band for the youth. A few of the musicians worked with the students, teaching them about reading chord charts and making music together. Kaylea attended one of the practices and asked the keyboardist for advice about incorporating violin into worship.
“You really need to talk to the young woman who plays on Sunday mornings,” he said. “She is really good.”
Because of the positioning of the keyboard and violin on the stage of the church, he couldn’t really see who was playing violin. He was talking to her about her.
Kaylea turned bright red at the compliment.
* * * * *
Kaylea’s violin skills were tested her senior year of high school. Her violin teacher assigned her Bach’s Partita Number 2 in D minor, which is the same song Vanya played in Umbrella Academy when she auditioned for first chair. The song starts off deliberately and then takes off and never stops. When she practiced, I thought to myself, “On your mark…get set…and go!!!” She took the song all the way to state, where she had one small hiccup in the performance. I was her page turner and honestly believe I was more nervous about turning the page at the proper time than she was actually playing. When she finished, the judge complimented her performance.
“No one plays Bach perfectly. That was wonderfully delightful, thank you. And good job turning the page, dad.”
She earned top marks for her performance.
I still want to get a recording of her playing the song alongside Vanya. I think that would be fun.
* * * * *
It’s been years since I’ve written a song. I’m now writing stories. The same year that Kaylea started playing violin, I started working on a story titled The House of Music. The story is set in a mystical musical theater and simply asks the question, “What good is music in our broken world?” One of these years, I hope to give it to her as a birthday gift. Maybe she can compose melodies to the songs included in it.
As of this writing, Kaylea wants to be a music teacher. She is currently learning how to play the trombone and practicing the piano and working on theory far more advanced than anything I ever learned while playing the guitar.
Kaylea knows the answer to the question raised in the book.
Music is a divine language, bringing hope and healing to its hearers, spreading joy and life and wonder in ways words often can’t express.
These are the things Kaylea does wherever she goes.
After all, her name means, “celebration.”
Happy birthday, Kaylea.
