Day 37: singing off key

We've been practicing for a couple of months.  I had wanted the boys to try singing at church, they picked the song "He reigns" by newsboys and were interested in giving it a try. 

The song is deceptively tricky with its timing and nuanced chord progression, but the chorus is easy and catchy.  The boys decided to split up verses,  each singing one and all of them joining the refrain.  We practiced with the recording but didn't have the opportunity to do it with church musicians until this morning.  We don't mean to have judgement about imperfection but we're surrounded by polish and so the imperfect is notic

We weren't the Von Traps. But the boys were joyful, they knew the words,  they (mostly) for the tune and timing down and they followed the plan for who was singing what.  They got up in front of the church and sang. It was a little off. 

We're used to everything being so edited that we expect little kids to sound like those perfect child recordings or all of our doodles to look like the time lapse art that we see on social media. We aren't intentionally judgemental,  we are just so surrounded by editted, polished everything that imperfection stands out in our world.  

We have an internal reflux to fix things. To point out the missed timing,  the off pitch note. There's a place for that. 

But today,  my boys taught me there's a place for imperfect gifts. 

They didn't notice the errors in the performance,  nor were they overly proud. They treated church like any other day.  They just did something a little extra special.  I think it was between them and God. They had practiced hard.  They gave a good effort. 

God loves imperfect gifts given from the heart.