Christmas Symphony With Ian

Some wonderful neighbors offered us two tickets to see the Utah Symphony the week before Christmas.  I was very excited since Brian and I love the symphony, but as luck would have it, Brian had a work assignment he could not get out of the night of the performance.  I got on the phone to call around and see if I could find someone else to go with me and my musical son Ian overheard and piped up saying that he would like to go.  Well, of course I was thrilled that my 10-year-old son was asking to come to the symphony with me so - it was a date.

The performance was so, so lovely.  There was a choir and two professional singers who just blew us to the backs of our seats with their voices.  The songs were all delightful, mostly a medley of favorite Christmas tunes.  When I glanced down at the program, I noticed that "O Holy Night" was near the end.  That is one of my all time favorite Christmas songs and here is a story of why:

In the fall of 1997, I got to attend a semester abroad at BYU Jerusalem.  It was one of the most blessed and wonder filled times in my life.  The Jerusalem center was like living in a palace.  I'm not just saying all of this in glossed over retrospect, I really felt that way even when I lived there.  It is a true architectural wonder.  I had a balcony and my own personal rose garden just off of my bedroom with a magnificent view of the city and the most amazing professors ever.  It was a magical time in my life.

Each Sunday, we attended sacrament meeting on the upper floor of the center which had stadium style seating facing a two-story solid glass window that overlooked the city from the Mount of Olives.  Can you imagine how blessed to get to attend sacrament meeting under such circumstances every Sunday?

Toward the end of our stay (we went back home just before Christmas) we had an evening talent show in the upper room and one of my roommates sang the song "O Holy Night."  To this day, I have to say, it was the most beautiful rendition I have ever heard.  I would hear her on the upper floor practicing for weeks before the performance and the workers would stop their duties and tell her she should travel the world as a performer, so beautiful was her voice.

After I came home from my time in Jerusalem, each Christmas when I would hear that song I would be instantly transported back to that beautiful room with the magnificent view and I would hear my roommate's unforgettable voice in my mind.  It often brought a tear to my eye thinking back to that very sacred time in my life.

As the years went on, I went through some rough patches in life, and one year at Christmas I heard the song and the tears came, but after awhile, I realized that they weren't happy tears of joyful memories, they were bitter tears because my life in that moment was so much the opposite of the blessed life I had experienced back in my castle in Jerusalem.  And the years went on like that.  Sometimes, the song took me back to a happy spot and other times the contrast was too great and a bit of sadness set in.

When I saw the song on the program, I wondered if it would transform me back in time the way it had so many times before.  But, when it came, something different happened.  Instead of seeing that wondrous, beautiful setting of old and instead of hearing the gorgeous voice in my head of my roommate, I felt a sudden clarity that we are sometimes blessed to feel in life.  A clarity of being completely present right there in that moment.  I felt so blessed to be sitting in those center row balcony seats enjoying such an inspiring performance.  I felt so grateful for the thoughtful neighbors who had given us this gift.  And, most of all, I felt like the luckiest person ever to be sitting next to the most awesome 10-year-old boy I have ever known and to get to be his mom.

I didn't need to be transported back to that blessed moment in my life because the moment I was in happened to be just perfect.