That's Who I Am

The BYU performing group named the "Young Ambassadors" once came to the Chicago area when I was a kid. We had seen this group before when we lived in Wichita so I knew what to expect. I was mesmerized as a young girl of nine or ten, by their costumes, singing and dancing. I picked out the one girl that I thought was the best and then found the most handsome guy and stayed pretty much fixed on them for the entirety of the show. Their repertoire was from broadway shows, historical anthems and saved for the end, church Primary songs.

I loved and still love Primary songs. I was the young girl who sang Sing Your Way Home on my walk home from school.

Near the end of the show the performers spanned out across the audience and selected a few lucky kids to come up and sing a primary song called I am a Child of God. I was one of the few that got to stand on the brightly lit stage and sing. This song was one of my favorite and I can still remember standing among the tall, beautiful and handsome ones that I had focused on all evening , singing...

I am a child of God
And He has sent me here
Has given me and earthly home
With parents kind and dear

Lead me
Guide me
Walk beside me
Help me find the way
Teach me all that I must do
To live with Him some day

These words were ones I believed and knew as a kid. I have been blessed enough to know really who I am as it relates to my Heavenly Father. I am his daughter. It is just as easy to state it as it is to feel it. I feel like I have always known that's who I am.

Once upon a time, when my life was not on one of those easy stretches and there didn't seem to be any easy answers for my trials, I was unloading my woes to my sister, Joni. She is the one I can count on to listen and then to make me laugh...hard; not just polite chuckles, but belly busting laughs! That day she may have made me laugh, I don't remember, but I do remember some powerful advice she gave me. She said to me,

" You need a theme song"

"A what?"

" You know, a song that makes you feel good...your very own theme song."

When I got of the phone I thought and thought for a while and then it came to me. It was a song called "That's Who I Am" by Jessica Andrews. The words to this song made me recall what I had always known.

I am a daughter
I am a sister
I am a mother
I am a friend
I am an aunt
I am a teacher
I am a wife
I am a Child of God.

I am never alone and on that day Joni reminded me of that. I am forever grateful to her for those words of wisdom that reminded me amidst the feelings of endless struggle that I can face anything because I know who I am.

Thanks my sweet sister, Joni. You bless my life and Happy Birthday.