Choirs of Angels

            It has been hard for me this year. Hard to feel the loving spirit. You know how sometimes you are surprised by joy? I’ve been more like wrapped in acoustical tile, somehow. At church, I was looking forward to leading the Christmas hymns. But when we opened with Joy to the World, it was like I was having to drag everybody along. The room was heavy somehow, and it made my arms really tired. Then Debbie did her program, and it was nice—but not the kind of music that fires my soul, the Bach, the Handel, the Mendelssohn. They did an arrangement of the LDS version of Away in a Manger that was really nice. Really, the choir was the best I had heard it in years. It was just the songs. They were just songs. To me. I was fighting this disappointed feeling, and then feeling guilty for being disappointed—because I knew they had worked really hard, and after all, Debbie had to suffer through my stuff all those years.
            In the middle of all that and at the end of this whole year, I remembered I had to direct the closing hymn, O Come All Ye Faithful, an anthem that moves me and seems like real praise and is my Christmas banner. At the thought of it, I was scared. I’m never scared leading the music. I’m not even scared giving talks and stuff. But my stomach was almost sick because I was afraid I would not be able to do it. I would not be able to give it to the congregation as the gift I wanted to give. I’d just let them down. I had no energy. No courage. Just that heaviness.
           But what else was I going to do? I stood up at the end of the program and walked up there to the stand, taking my place between the choir and the congregation. I whispered to them that they had done well, and that I needed them now. Then I turned to the congregation, and Helen played the introduction.
I lifted my empty arms, asking the congregation to rise—and then it began. The music.
          From behind me, it roared: “Oh COME-,” and from in front of me. I was sandwiched between those two billowing forces. And the sound was deep, warm and rich. It kept me on my feet – it lifted first my hands, then my heart. I was a bird, riding a thermal.
          I wish I could say that it was the cure. But it was a cure. For that moment, I felt the unity that is the heart of the season—the way we hold each other up, join together in the force of our hope, our striving, our passion.
          And then our Emma came over this morning to bring two bracelets, two lovely, simple, elegant beaded bracelets, one for Chaz, one for me, just because she loves us.
          And things have been better ever since.