Showing posts with label Katherine Laycock Little. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Katherine Laycock Little. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Drummers at Christmastime

Sunday night was our stake's annual Christmas in the Grove concert. This is one of my favorite celebrations of the year and of the season. I look forward to it all year. I have a tape recording of the very first Christmas in the Grove- 15? 16+ years ago when it was just a small choir and a small congregation in the chapel of the stake center. Now it has grown so large that we have to hold it in the American Fork tabernacle and it is usually standing room only. And Katherine Laycock Little, my wonderful friend, always chooses music that so wonderfully celebrates the birth of our Savior that I am always moved to my very core.

I have always had a child in the children's choir and when they were old enough they joined the youth choir. And those that were able, played an instrument- usually percussion. This year, Jacob was in the small group that played percussion for the concert and I was excited when he told me that they were going play one of my favorite songs, Little Drummer Boy. I was not prepared, though, for how much this particular song would move me and touch the deepest part of my heart.

As the song began, for some reason, I became hyper focused on the words of the song and the fact that they were the drummer's words.
Then the second verse began and I became focused on the drummer.

Then I looked at the drummer- really looked at him and saw--
my son giving his heart and his song to his Savior and Redeemer, everything he, a poor boy, had to give,
and I was moved in a way I thought I would never feel again because I have spent a lot of years building a protective layer around my heart.

But my son, with his offering to my Savior, helped tear that layer away and filled my heart to over flowing with love and gratitude.





for some reason my tripod was not turning smoothly that night, and at the end of the song, I truly wish that I could have taped it so that you could see both Jake and Katherine as she led the song. The small interaction between her as she led both the choir and the percussion was beautiful, but I hoped you felt the spirit anyway.







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Sunday, December 13, 2009

Christmas in the Grove

Tonight is the 16th annual Christmas in the Grove choir performance put on by my stake. It started small with only the choir and their families in attendance in the chapel of the stake center. It quickly grew and now we hold it in the American Fork tabernacle and people come from all over the county and then some. We usually end up turning people away because there is just no room.

Brandi is singing again this year in the children's choir. I remember when Donovan was barely old enough for the children's choir. Ethan is singing in the youth choir and Jacob is playing percussion. I will be taking part in the audience portion of the program.

If you have had a chance to read my story that is included in the book, Stolen Christmas and Other Stories of the Season (available at Amazon.com), you would recognize the choir director as the same Katherine that is in charge of the choir for Christmas in the Grove.

3 years ago when I first wrote The Choir it was a very different story than it is today. But the one thing that remained the same in every single draft and reworking and then rewriting of the story from that first simple blog post to the submission to the contest to the final draft published in the book, is Katherine. Every single time I sat down to write, it was her face, her countenance, her persanage that made the story. Without her, there is no choir, no story, no Christmas in the Grove.

This program tonight is the event that sets Christmas in motion for me. There is the getting out of the tree and decorations. Lighting the house (a bit ridiculously this year, though), listening to all the songs, shopping, wrapping, baking. But until Christmas in the Grove, they are just motions. After attending the program tonight and feeling of Katherine's love for the Savior and partaking of the Spirit brought in by the choir, then-then it can be Christmas.



Indeed.

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