Listen to the Music

The Radio played either oldies or country music as I grew up. I once got into the modern Christian music as a pre-teen only to have my mother not really trust it. I remember riding along as I sat in the passenger seat, I was singing along to the song from the radio as my mother drove. She suddenly turn off the radio alarmed and annoyed. I looked back at her from my daydreaming out the window in surprise. She sighed "You really should pay attention to the WORDS of a song before you just sing along." I was still not sure of what to say back as I frowned in the sudden silence. My mother had been worrying over music and movies for a long time with us kids. Even poplar sitcoms or TV shows that family and friends watched were not allowed. (Like the feminist movement propaganda in the TV show "Dr. Quinn" or the condoning of divorce in the comedy sitcom "Step by Step".) I made a mental list of everything I would watch someday when I wasn't a kid anymore....and I DID. In my first year of my own apartment I rented every 1980's movie that was popular. When it came to music my mother would brake down all the words and lyrics line by line. She then asked us if we thought these words were glorifying to God or not. I remember how she would ask with her hands on the steering wheel in the moving car, as her long thin fingers would point out towards the radio when she just heard something she did not like, "Would you be proud if Jesus heard this too?" How important it is for me to mention that this happened all the time through out our childhood, because it began to feel like a game in getting the right answer in at her first. We had the following replies usually at the ready like; A. Jesus already sees and hears all, so he isn't surprised. B. We have no control over what the radio plays and C. WHO CARES. As teenagers we really did say these things back at our mother but she never gave up her speeches on how the message of music will slip into our heads and corrupt us into Satan's trap so we need stay alert! My sister took her music privately with head phones and a long glare if you asked what she was listening to. I stayed loyal to the oldies long after my country music got boring....and without realizing it I knew the words in every song, I listened intently to what the song was saying and what it meant before I would like it or not. A few years ago I went on a road trip with my mom to the coast, she played the same songs over and over again of Johnny Cash. I asked "Can we just listen to something else maybe on the radio?" (For As a young married woman my music knowledge has grown beyond the 1950's.) Yet my Mother with her lightly gray streaked curly brown hair frowned at me saying "The radio doesn't play good music anymore....have you listened to some of those words and messages they have nowadays!?!" I smiled to myself looking out the window of the passenger seat once again, for I can't help it now......I WILL Always listen to the music, to the words it shares and what the song means.