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Chautona Havig

Chautona Havig

Using story to connect YOU to the Master Storyteller

3 Excellent Reasons to Make Hymns a Priority in Your Life

by Chautona Havig · 4 Comments

We all know that I love hymns and am a bit of a storyteller myself, so it's no wonder that a book titled "I Love to Tell The Story" caught my eye. via @chautonahavig

Humming, “I love to tell the story…” began the questioning. “Are you like her? Do you sing hymns when you’re stressed or happy?”

You know that old saying, “If I had a dollar for…” Yeah. I could almost pay the mortgage every month with that one. Or at least, it feels like I could.

I also never know how to answer it. See, I do. I’m always singing—sometimes hymns, sometimes old pop music from the ’40s or ’50s. Sometimes one right after the other.

Seriously, in anticipation of this post, I made a “playlist” of the songs I’ve sung over the past week. It looks a lot like this:

  • Cielito Lindo
  • When We Meet in Sweet Communion
  • Sound the Battle Cry
  • Gringo’s Guitar
  • The Reverend Mr. Black
  • Our God Is Alive
  • South Coast
  • El Matador
  • Mission San Miguel (yeah… on a Spanish kick this week)
  • The whole Whatever Is True album
  • Oh, So Many Years

And more. Way more. Trust me. I sing when I don’t even know it. Don’t believe me? I sang from Bishop to Ridgecrest on the way back from our author retreat a couple of years ago. That’s 140 miles that Clark and April had to put up with me singing everything from “Tomorrow Will Be Kinder” to “The Sand and the Foam.”

But hymns? Yeah. I’d guess about half what I sing are hymns. From joy-filled “Hallelujah Praise Jehovah,” to broken, “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” Some of them, like “In the Garden,” I kind of feel guilty for singing. After all, it’s not exactly Scriptural. But it’s beautiful, and I think it reflects symbolism that is. I hope.

What does it have to do with Aggie?

Well, when I went to write Aggie’s character, I wanted to make her more purposeful with how she sang her hymns. Yes, sometimes when I need to kick my butler in gear, I’ll sing “To the work, to the work, we are servants of God…” However, it isn’t always my first response. Wish it was.

Confession: I often start talking to myself—saying what I want to be the truth… repeating it until I know how to behave the next time. It’s weird, but it’s me. Then I sing.

Still, like many of my readers, I’ve learned a lot from Aggie, so when I had the chance to review a book, I Love to Tell the Story, where hymns made an impact on someone’s life, I requested a review copy lickety splickety. And then I learned a few things. Three, to be exact.

I love to tell the story review

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3 Excellent Reasons to Make Hymns a Priority in Your Life

I Love to Tell the Story… I’d seen another book by that title years ago—all about the backgrounds of many of the hymns we sing. It included John Newton’s salvation story on that slave ship and Horatio Spafford’s horrible inspiration for “It Is Well with My Soul.” I sing that one often, myself.

This book, however, had a subtitle. Growing up Blessed and Baptist in Small-Town Indiana. Well, the first church I ever attended regularly was a small Independent Fundamental Baptist church in Ventura, California in 1981. While the author, Susan Braum, is a little older than I am, it’s not by much. California isn’t Indiana, but I figured I’d relate to how hymns impacted her story just the same.

Look, I don’t know why I didn’t catch it when I requested the review copy, but I Love to Tell the Story really isn’t about those hymns at all—not even about how they impacted her as a child. Well, maybe about how she didn’t always want to sing them as solos, but…

I really had to change my expectations for the book after the second or third chapter. That’s when I went and reread the synopsis carefully. I’m glad I did. It wouldn’t have been just or kind to review the book based on my expectations rather than what the synopsis said it was.

And, I’d have lost out on some fun stories.

Look, I have to be honest. I Love to Tell the Story isn’t a book I would have chosen to read if I’d paid close attention to that synopsis. I don’t know Ms. Braun, so I don’t have a connection to her stories. I wish I’d realized earlier so I could have looked her up on social media and gotten to know her a bit better before I dove in. Memoirs are usually most meaningful to those who know the person unless the person is from someplace very different or has lived through something tragic.

For that reason, I should have gotten to know her a bit first.

But between my own history singing many of the same songs that Ms. Braun references as inspiration for each chapter, her stories, and the way that hymns seem to linger with people long after they’ve stopped singing them, as I read, I learned those three things I mentioned.

First: Hymns are like the soundtracks of our spiritual lives.

  • The way Susan Braun used the hymns to set the tone of her next story felt familiar—a quiet reminder that there are certain hymns that I equate with certain times of my life.
  • Summer in Oklahoma when I was thirteen— “Glory Land Way.”
  • The “church on the hill” in Noel, Missouri— “I’ll Live in Glory.”
  • School in Noel— “Face to Face.”

But my spiritual life has a soundtrack, too.

  • When I’m prideful— “Come Thou Fount” (that line, “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it…”
  • When I’m weak— “Sound the Battle Cry”
  • When I’m struck with the grandeur of God’s Gifts— “Our God Is Alive.”
  • When I’m scared— “How Great Thou Art” (although I confess I couldn’t get out the words, “And when I think, that God His Son not sparing…” out when my grandson was on death’s door).

Second: (related to the first), Hymns are a way to pray when we can’t find words.

Look, I know the Holy Spirit fixes our fumbling, bumbling words and makes them a sweet aroma to the Lord. I know this. But I’m that person who would just seriously say, “Well, Holy Spirit, You know what I need, so can you fix me up with the Father?” Yeah. I’m that person. So hymns give me a place to start on the rare occasion that words fail me.

Third: Hymns join hearts together in a special way.

Okay, so all spiritual songs do. I get that. But much like a story, Ms. Braun tells of how even “non-church girls” sang hymns at a party once, they are kind of a unifier. Even the secular world will occasionally sing “Amazing Grace” or “How Great Thou Art.”

So, with all this hymn talking, what did I think of the memoir?

I Love to Tell the Story is an interesting story, although it’s a bit disjointed. Stories go back and forth in time enough that I had trouble following how old Ms. Braun was in some spots. The end, also, seemed rather rushed. We spent about three-quarters or more of the book with an under-eleven or so Susan and then the rest had a few chapters of her in high school.

Recommended for folks who grew up in the late sixties through the eighties. There are enough cultural references that you’ll have a walk through memory lane. Also recommended for people who feel like if you grew up in an evangelical or fundamental home/church environment, you’re doomed to hate God and anyone connected with Him. Ms. Braun defies that notion. As do I.

Still, if you love hymns, I Love to Tell the Story might interest you.

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Comments

  1. Caryl Kane says

    March 22, 2019 at 6:46 pm

    Thank you for sharing!

    Reply
  2. Dianna says

    March 20, 2019 at 4:16 pm

    What a fun post for this book!
    My grandmother was the pianist at church forever. She finally passed the torch to someone else and I think she still misses it. I bet she’d love this book; she would relate to the positive memories connected with hymns.

    Reply
  3. Rita Wray says

    March 20, 2019 at 9:01 am

    Sounds like a great read.

    Reply
  4. Melissa W says

    March 20, 2019 at 4:45 am

    Singing definately does something to improve my mood! I’ve joined a community Christian choir the last 2 years that practices from January to March and it has made the winter go by so much faster!

    Reply

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The Because Fiction Podcast

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Episode 264: A Chat with Romance Author, Sarah Monzon
byChautona Havig

Finally getting a chance to chat with Sarah Monzon was a total delight, and learning all about her latest release, All’s Fair in Love and Christmas was equally awesome.  My copy is here and waiting for me to dive into the battle of the celebrations!  EEEP! Listen in to see what that even means!

Note: I sound like I’m underwater. We heard it during our interview, but I couldn’t make it behave and couldn’t fix it. Sorry!

Note: links may be affiliate links that provide me with a small commission at no extra expense to you.

How Does an Intense Christmas Competition Lead to Love?

All’s Fair in Love and Christmas has so much going for it that I don’t know where to start! Fun mom who made our heroine’s childhood Christmases an international delight without ever leaving home?  Check!  Social anxiety adding to the stress of competing for a promotion?  Check?  Romcom hilarity?  Check, check?  And add to all that Sarah’s wonderful writing and delightful characterization?  I’m all in.

We also chatted about why she chose to write about a woman with social anxiety, her preferred reading methods, and some of my favorite books by her. For a refresher, those are The Isaac Project, 12 Days of Snowmen, and Book Nerds & Boyfriends (a collection of three novellas).

All’s Fair in Love and Christmas by Sarah Monzon

Two workplace rivals. One festive competition. And a romance that upends it all.

Every December two things are guaranteed for graphic designer Mackenzie Graham–Christmas celebrations and the annual promotion at her workplace. Those two things are by no means mutually exclusive. In fact, the better an employee is at harnessing the Christmas spirit, the more likely they’ll win the new job. With her social anxiety, Mackenzie never thought she’d be a contender in her company’s holiday competition, so how exactly has she found herself dueling her workplace crush with wrapping paper tubes and using tinsel as her weapon of choice for a much-needed raise?

Jeremy Fletcher’s life is meticulously planned out, including how to win this year’s promotion at work. Not only will the new position fulfill some of his career goals, but as a single guardian to his twin niece and nephew, he needs the salary increase to support his family. Jeremy has barely noticed Mackenzie Graham around the office, but now that she’s his rival, he can’t stop thinking about her. Her quirkiness intrigues him, and he’s afraid that if he can’t get his head on straight, the promotion isn’t the only thing he’ll end up losing to Mackenzie.

“Inspirational rom-com readers are going to love this one.”–BETHANY TURNER, bestselling author of The Do-Over

You can learn more about Sarah on her WEBSITE.  Also follow her on BookBub and GoodReads.

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Episode 264: A Chat with Romance Author, Sarah Monzon
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