Many of the old-time church hymns create their own drama, stir the emotions, and sometimes take me back to another place in my life . . . early childhood.

We kids who were raised in church learn many hymns early. I often had a hymn, or sometimes more than one, playing in my head on Sunday afternoons. They replayed so often that to this day the words stay with me sometimes even the third and fourth verses committed to memory decades ago.

It was this enjoyment of so many hymns that made it difficult to choose a second hymn for my mother’s funeral service last month. Two was the number suggested by the minister, and since I am a member of a different denomination than my Mom, I didn’t want to suggest that our favorite nineteen hymns be included. The first hymn however, was a non-decision “How Great Thou Art” was number one of my mother’s lifetime top ten.

But, my own relationship with this hymn has a different meaning, one that I sadly never shared with my mom. I truly regret that now and it’s the reason that I cannot make it through even the first stanza without the tears springing to my eyes. I thought I was composed at the funeral service, until the organist began to play the familiar notes that carry with them those long-familiar words:

“Oh Lord my God

When I in awesome wonder

Consider all the worlds

Thy hands have made”

I was okay until then although the organ was tugging at me. Then the trouble began…

“I see the stars

I hear the rolling thunder

Thy power throughout

The universe displayed”

By then I was in full weep it’s amazing how fast it can overcome you. The nose is instantly full and running almost as fast as the tears. My contacts were swimming as I realized I didn’t need the hymnal to continue those deeply affecting words.

Yes, the hymn itself is about the pure power of God and the miracle of creation. But that’s not what gets to me. Those words transport me directly back to age four, sitting up on my mother’s lap during thunderstorms. She wrapped her arms around me so she could squeeze me when the thunder rumbled then crashed. She’d roar “Whoooooa” laughing gleefully. “Wow, that was a boomer.” Then when the splintering cracks of close lightning flashed she would exclaim: “Oh, how beautiful!””

When I smelled a rainstorm coming, it was important to run to my perch on her lap as quickly as possible. “We don’t want to miss any of the show,” she’d exclaim. And sometimes she’d talk about God bowling upstairs and how powerful he must be. Long before I ever entered a bowling alley I knew what a strike was. Thunderous noise was not an opportunity for fear only delight.

Her reasoning behind our storm dates on the porch was three-fold, and looking back I learned important life lessons from sitting on Mom’s lap in the rain.

She taught me that there was tremendous beauty in nature . . . that it was all around me, even the loud, crashing anger of thunderstorms. There was nothing to fear if we used common sense stayed sheltered and enjoyed the performance. and each other. “Being afraid is for ninnies this is just fun.”

All of her life she loved the world around her she marveled at the ocean and could sit for hours just watching it. But it didn’t matter where she was. She left her beloved Atlantic coast to move to our hills and simply transferred her joyful admiration to the new local beauty around her. She loved the scents of salt marshes, but not more than that of new-mown hay.

In her last few years I’d take her on long rides when she no longer had her car (boy, was she mad about that!). Every ride was full of exclamations about the fertile farmland, the rolling hills, the shades of green, flowering trees, even the cows all of nature’s bounty. We had spent my childhood exploring together, as much as her double work schedule would allow. She could never get enough of new places, new experiences, and I was going to have them too.

“When through the woods

And forest glades I wander

And hear the birds

Sing sweetly in the trees”

My mother really felt that the beauty around her was put there to enjoy. She never missed much. She saw details that most people overlooked . . . redwing blackbirds on a distant fence or a tiny patch of snow still deep in the May woods. She saw more from behind the wheel than most people see as passengers.

“When I look down

From lofty mountain grandeur

And hear the brook

And feel the gentle breeze”

Her long ago porch lessons have really stuck. My mom was bound and determined that I was to be as fearless as she was it was not going to be an easy world out there for a girl whose father dropped out when she was three. She didn’t realize she was creating a mini-dynasty of strong girls.

My daughter, who sang a beautiful a Capella solo at her Nana’s funeral, also benefitted from her grandmother’s insistence on personal strength, fearlessness and independence. Alix makes speeches and sings in public. She has bungee jumped, mountain climbed, water spelunked in foreign caves, scuba dived, climbed the Sydney Harbor Bridge and is raising her daughter in the same intrepid manner. My mother was so proud of their adventurousness.

Mom gave me in those life lessons the spirit to explore, not to miss anything. She went as far as she could as often as she could, and she took me with her. She gave me strength not to fear, but to know my limits. And she made me realize that a spirit of adventure is only good if you enjoy the opportunities as they come your way. This was thirty years before Women’s Lib.

The refrain of the hymn perfectly captures the feelings that the words elicit – I feel it twirl in my insides, every time.

“Then sings my soul . . .

My savior God to thee

How great thou art”

As I write this, the melody is repeating in my brain. The tears have started. Again.

“Then sings my soul . . . ” indeed it does.

She also taught me that tenderness is an important part of trying to be strong.

Thank you, Mom.