While our children were small, Bill and I traveled only on weekends so that we could be normal parents during the week. Often, we took one of our children with us so we could give the child who seemed to need it most our undivided attention for the whole weekend. The other two stayed home with my parents. Later, after Suzanne reached junior-high school, we chose to stay home most weekends and take two or three tours a year that would last about two weeks. These times seemed very long to us, but this arrangement allowed us to be home for our kids' ball games, concerts, and other activities.
During one such tour in the fall of 1981, I made an entry in my journal that, later on, inspired a song. This is the entry:
October 1— On the road: I find I have to put my mind in some special kind of neutral to stay away this long. Long absence throws off all my natural chemistry.
The concerts have been excellent, but it is hard to keep enough of my heart here to be complete between concerts. It becomes a circus existence: get up, eat breakfast, read, take a bath, go to early supper, sound check, get ready, do the concert, talk to people, get into the bus, drive all night, and start again.
Interspersed are some lovely moments with the troupe, and often there are wonderful times with Bill, but constant travel takes on an aura of fantasy like riding a glider, looking for a safe and solid place to land. I've even taken up embroidery! I'd rather write, but the bus is too bumpy, and my creative energies are drained by the intense exertion of the concerts and the dulling boredom of endless miles.
I would love the miles if there were time to stop and see things, but we're always driven right past the wonders of the world by the tyranny of our schedule. I've been in every state in the Union, yet I've never seen the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Tetons, Glacier National Park, a Black Hills Passion Play, or the islands in Puget Sound.
But I have seen people and the terrains that mold their temperaments and shape their values. I've sensed the demands made on them by the stubborn rocks or the severity of the climate. I've seen the barren deserts that threaten them and the crowded cities that rob them of their uniqueness. I've seen the wide-open spaces that teach them to trust other human beings, and I've seen the congested neighborhoods that teach them to peer at the world through guarded eyes.
I've touched the children from Manhattan to Montana, from San Antonio to Saginaw and I've felt the hope and fear in them. I've watched them reach for me in open affection and shrink from me in distrust. I've seen promises with blond pigtails and black shiny pixies. I've had black and brown, yellow, white, and reddish arms around my neck. With my heart I've learned to understand love in a dozen languages.
I've heard their parents say," Come to us!" They say it from the seclusion of North Dakota. They say it from the anonymity of the Bronx. They say it from the mountain poverty of Kentucky and from the lighted plastic glitter of Las Vegas.
"Come to us!" they say. "Don't forget us."
As if we could.
"Why do you do it?" the glib reporters ask. I find myself looking into their eyes for some clue to the living person inside the professional for only a real person could understand. Otherwise, I don't have the words. I'm sure they'd smile their well-rehearsed, objective, detached smiles and be polite while I say, "It's Jesus; He's come to us and given us life. Now we have to go."
They'd nod politely and think money, glamour, travel, fame, excitement. They'd think it was only a gimmick if I told them that my mother's heart is pulled apart, my body is exhausted, and my brain is in suspension. They wouldn't believe me if I told them it's the Reason bigger than life, the Place wider than here, the Time beyond now, and the unforgettable voices rising over millions of miles and fifteen years of days, joining in a deafening chorus that will not go away: "Come to us don't forget us!"
...And I know I have to go because Someone came to me.
Later, after rereading this entry, I wrote the lyric to "I Have Seen the Children." A wonderful friend, award-winning country songwriter Paul Overstreet, set the lyric to music, and Bill and I recorded it on the Welcome Back Home project of the Bill Gaither Trio. It has always served to remind me why we sing, travel, write, and serve and that we must never mistake activity for our true mission in life.
