Probably my favorite date ever came shortly after our second child’s birth. Mom had come from two states away to help, and she encouraged us to take a date while she was there.
I dressed up in my ($9 K-mart clearance sale) burgundy velveteen sheath dress, real nylons (a rare thing for me, at least post-1992 LOL), and the highest black heels I’ve ever owned. Steve looked handsome and regal in his black suit. We left behind the diapers, dishes, and fatigue to be a “fancy couple going to a fancy concert” for a night.
We headed to one of the most beautiful cathedrals in Indianapolis. We sat in the worn, polished pews and waited.
Then came swirling around us the most heavenly vocal tones of a Renaissance masterpiece. The twelve voices of Chanticleer sang as one, blossoming around each other in the most breathtaking melodious phrases soaring into the height of the cathedral’s peaked ceiling. Most concert halls echo with the coughs and clearing throats of the audience; this audience was dead silent, all of us hardly daring to breathe.
Two hours of this sweetness later, we headed home, filled with the joy of God’s gift of music.
I will likely never have an experience like this again. Even though I am recovering in safe housing, attending a concert with the typical perfumes would tear me down again so much that it probably wouldn’t be worth it.
But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: what did I do to deserve such an experience? Why should I be entitled to that Chanticleer concert? Why should I get to enjoy that while others suffer in poverty, persecution, or war zones their entire lives—from birth to death? I am thankful for that experience, and though I grieve what I miss, I also see what an undeserved blessing it was in the first place.
Christa Upton Black Hills Picture Books Edgemont, SD 57735
