Make a Joyful Noise to the LORD all the Earth

If you're a David Crowder Band fan, you probably just put that subject line to a DCB melody. I pulled out a journal I write in every so often for each of my kids. I don't use them nearly as much as I wanted to. They are filled with little phrases/words/expressions/moments that I haven't wanted to forget. When Kyle was born, there were so many sounds that I didn't want to forget, so I tried to write them out so I would always remember them. My first memory that I wrote has already slipped into 'forgotten-land,' so I was thrilled to read it again, and even amazed I had forgotten. And it's definitely something the Lord wants me to remember. It reads, "When Kyle cried his first upon birth, I exclaimed he was making a joyful noise to the LORD so my son might give witness to my unbelieving doctor." Now let me clarify...Dr. Maggie Landwermeyer did not deliver Kyle. We were immeasurably blessed to have her deliver Makenna. And Maggie is a Believer which made her delivery of Makenna amazing, having my friend deliver her. But a different doctor delivered Kyle.

When I reread those words, I did remember saying that, but I didn't remember that being my motivation. I do recall wondering if she heard me, what her thoughts were, if she had any reaction at all towards what I had said. Kyle screamed a lot when he was born. That was music to my ears. The photo is about thirty minutes after he was born and he discovered his fingers. The second picture is from a few weeks ago--he and Makenna in hysterical laughter!

Kyle screamed throughout his entire baptism, which is entirely seperate blog, but we have on video Pastor Knippa commenting in the midst of the screaming that he was making a joyful noise to the LORD. I never made that connection before, that it was reminiscent of Kyle's moment of birth, his first cry.

And it certainly foreshadowed that Kyle would be the kid who everyone could hear before they saw. He came in with a grand entrance, into this physical world, as well as his baptism into the Body of Christ.

If you've spent any amount of time with Kyle, you probably have heard us remind him to use his inside-voice. Kyle has two volume settings--low and high. The low is a whisper, the one he uses in church or when he wants to tell us a 'secret.' the high volume is what is used pretty much most of the time, especially when he's speaking zestfully, which is typically about anything and everything. Kyle speaks about the sky with zest. At 2, he talked about the shape of pretzels with zest, showing me what letter the pretzel looked like. He spoke about the new bow on his first Christmas gift this year with zest, exclaiming, "Look! I got a new bow!"

I suppose his 'noise' is really quite joyful. I have much to learn about his noise, how joyful it is, how much life there is in his expressive nature. He simply lives life out loud, large, as my Mom told me when he was an infant.