DONNA’S SONG is about the life-changing effects one small child can have on lives.
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DONNA’S SONG
Taking several Sunday School classes of very young children to the large nursing home wasn’t a good idea, I thought for the tenth time that morning. The children were getting frightened by the sights before them.
As we began to visit with several Alzheimer’s patients, one elderly man began shouting, quite loudly,
“No, no…get those kids out of here.”
At that low point, Donna tugged frantically at my hand and glancing at the look on her face, I thought, perhaps, he was right.
Of all the children, Donna had been my greatest concern.
She was severely mentally challenged and speech impaired.
Why had I allowed her to come to this dismal place, I thought in near desperation.
To divert the Alzheimer’s patients, we grouped the children to sing the song we had practiced.
The best-laid plans can falter, This one did.
Traumatized children now stood frozen.
Not a sound.
We tried again.
Nothing.
A third attempt.
Silence.
Finally, I heard one small off-key voice.
No words were sung, but rather the tune we’d practiced, in a somewhat odd key was being rendered
by a sole child.
Little Donna alone was attempting to sing.
The other kids eyed each other. They couldn’t let Donna do alone what they had been afraid to do.
Soon, one voice after another joined the child who sang a wordless chant of her own making.
Soon the shouting man quieted down, and fifty voices of little children raised in song filled that nursing home.
Donna’s courage led us.
Those nursing home residents have long since passed on, as I write this more than fifty years beyond that day.
I have changed from a teenaged Sunday School teacher to a mother of six, and then, to a grandmother of more than a dozen, but the lesson Donna taught me that day, is as fresh and alive and strong and touching as it was that day so long ago.
It changed my life.
Donna taught us all that you never allow fear to stop the use of our gifts,
even when it means you must start out alone,
and sing without words,
YOUR song
of courage
and pure love.
Editor’s comment:
Carol wrote this about her own experience working with children. If you enjoyed it as much as I did you may want to read some of her other stories. “The Meal,” gives an insight into a woman’s view of what Jesus ate.
Another great one is, “A Coat of His Love.” It tells the story of God using children to see a problem, a mother who went to God for help realizing that she was powerless to help. Then a neighbor who knew that the mother was in touch with God and would know what to do with what she found.