My Heart Is So Full, It's Hard to Squeeze out Any Words

...but here's one little snippet I posted on Facebook tonight.  :)

I used to say that when I get to heaven, the first thing I want to do--after meeting God face to face--is lie down and sleep for a hundred years or so. It's entirely possible that when I said that, my brain wasn't functioning quite up to par as a result of days and nights of sleep deprivation because of nursing an infant while caring for other children while keeping a household running while homeschooling and so on and so forth.  However, tonight I discovered what I REALLY want to do for the first hundred years: listen to the hosts of heaven sing Handel's Messiah.

I heard part of it tonight at JMU's Holidayfest (an AMAZING concert that featured the Shenandoah Valley Children's Choir during some of the pieces...I cannot tell you how thrilled I was to watch my firstborn up on that stage, surrounded by such talented, devoted musicians), and my soul filled up to the brim with a deep sense of wellness and peace and happiness and joy and wholeness and WORSHIP. I sheepishly admit that I wanted to bawl like a baby as the waves of sound and the meaningful words washed over me; only by stern effort did I hold myself together. But when I get to heaven...oh! I want to hear those words and those choruses sung by a heavenly choir. "And the glory of the Lord..." "Glory to God..." and "Hallelujah!"

Tonight was a tiny little glimpse of the glory of heaven. I cannot wait to experience it in all of its fullness!

P.S. Not to take away from the glorious solemnity of what I just wrote, but I do want to jot down a little something that totally cracks me up. On the way home, David and Josiah were excitedly talking about the concert, and David said to Josiah, "The Chorale did something really funny tonight. There was a song [in the Messiah portion] that used the word 'everybody' a lot, but instead of pronouncing it 'everyBody,' they kept saying 'everyVody'."

"David," I nearly shrieked with laughter, "they weren't saying 'everybody,' they were saying 'every VALLEY'!" [One of the choruses is "Every valley shall be exalted," and that phrase is repeated a lot in that song.]

"Oh!!" he responded, finally understanding why that "v" sound kept showing up.