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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

The Because Fiction Podcast
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Taking the pulse of Christian fiction

Episode 162: A Chat with Author, Nancy Naigle
byChautona Havig

Hey, we’re back after a couple of weeks of vacation, and boy did I need it. And, have I got a fabulous interview for you. Nancy Naigle and I talked about her books, her most recent release, What Remains True as well as her Christmas books and the one I’m most anxious to read, The Shell Collector. Listen in and learn about what Nancy says about this bet she has going on in What Remains True. Great stuff!

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

Need a Great Romantic Read to Wind Up Your Summer Reads?

As I said in the podcast, a while back, someone told me I’d LOVE The Shell Collector–one of those people who recommends books you HAVE to read if they say you do.  So I bought it and it’s been sitting on my shelf ever since. Well, now it’s on my GoodReads shelf, and I’m about to start it (and I optimistically thought I’d be done with it by the time this episode released. Oh, me of too much faith in myself and my time management!)

Author of over thirty books, not to mention a bestselling author who also has movies made of her novels (And The Shell Collector has been optioned! EEEP!), Nancy loves to write Christmas books and small-town stories. Seriously, as we talked, I felt like she was talking about me half the time. We’re so very alike in so many ways. It was fun.

Nancy also pointed out that her first books (if you go WAY back) are not Christian fiction and are a bit spicier than she prefers to write and definitely more than she writes today. So be warned there, but she did assure us that they are all closed-door books.

What Remains True by Nancy Naigle

One woman wants to win a bet. One man wants to become a rodeo champion. One little girl may give them both something even better—from USA Today bestselling author Nancy Naigle.

“A commitment-phobic rodeo star and a divorcée with secrets find love in this wholesome romance. . . . As uplifting as it is sweet.”—Publishers Weekly

Working at a little shop on Main Street in a small town is exactly the break that executive Merry Anna Foster needs following her divorce. She’s made a bet with her ex-husband that she can live on the amount of money she’s giving him in alimony. If she can do it, then Kevin will have to stop complaining and leave her alone. But after three months of this new life, will she even want to leave Antler Creek?

Adam Locklear, bull rider and owner of the local feedstore, is having the best year of his rodeo career. He’s also a bit distracted by the pretty new neighbor living in his old bunkhouse. But Adam has no time for matters of the heart. He’s got his future all mapped out, and that future doesn’t involve a woman just yet. It doesn’t involve parenting a little girl either. However, Carly Fowler still suddenly leaves five-year-old Zan—the daughter Adam didn’t know he had—in his care.

Is it possible that the future holds a life even better than what Merry Anna and Adam had each dreamed of? One that includes both tenderness and even love—not just for each other but for Zan too?

You can learn more about Nancy’s books and movies on her WEBSITE.

Oh, and PSST… I’m loving the audiobook of this one!

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Episode 162: A Chat with Author, Nancy Naigle
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