Have you ever had a song stuck in your head? For the past week, this one has been going around and around in my brain. I have no idea why. Is there a story there?
Some writers have a play list that they use while they write. I’ve never actually done one of those, but I often use songs in my stories. I’m not really a Country music fan, but I heard Ain’t That Lonely Yet by Dwight Yoakam, and the “what if” factor hit me. What would a Christian man do after being left at the altar? The answer to the question turned into my very first Love Inspired book, THE HEART’S HOMECOMING.
None of my other books was inspired by a song, but many of my books contain songs that inspire the characters or make the characters think about something in their lives, especially their love lives. In my book, A PLACE TO CALL HOME, the hero realizes God’s forgiveness when the congregation sings an old hymn, Just As I Am.
Do you have a song that you consider your song?
After serving six years in prison for the false charge of manslaughter in the death of his wife, Kurt Jansen must overcome a world of bitterness if he wants to start a new life. But his first priority is securing a restoration job to pay a private investigator to find the real killer and a lawyer to get his kids back.
Hiring a convicted wife-killer isn’t what kind-hearted Molly Finnerty bargains for as part of the prison ministry she supports. However, she begins to believe Kurt’s claim of innocence and gradually finds a great deal to like about him—perhaps more to like than she should.
Merrillee Whren is an award-winning author who writes inspirational romance. She is the winner of the 2003 Golden Heart Award for best inspirational romance manuscript presented by Romance Writers of America. She has also been the recipient of the RT Reviewers’ Choice Award and the Maggie Award for Excellence. She is married to her own personal hero, her husband of thirty plus years, and has two grown daughters. She has lived in Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Chicago and Florida but now makes her home in the Arizona desert. When she’s not writing, she spends her free time playing tennis or walking while she does the plotting for her novels.
I love it when words to an old hymn come to mind while I’m writing, and I look it up, and discover it is in the public domain so I can quote bits of it! If it is a newer song, I can only allude to it, and a few times, I’ve made up my own words.
I’ve never created a writing playlist. It’s only recently I’ve even begun to have any music on while I’m writing. It took more than two years of absolute silence (since I started writing alone at home) for it to be too quiet!
Oftentimes I’ll awaken in the morning with a song running through my head. It’s usually a hymn since that is primarily what we sing in our church. I wonder at what God has in store for me that day in conjunction with the song He put on my heart. Maybe it’s just a reminder of His sovereignty, or just a word of encouragement or just simply Him saying that He loves me & reminds me He is in my day. Whatever the reason, I love Him more for it!
As I am cleaning my house, I will play Pandora on my Kindle. I have it set for different contemporary Christian stations & one old-timey hymn station. It depends on the mood as to which one I will listen to. I quite often choose the hymns. It brings me back to the basics of the gospel & why I chose to follow Jesus all those years ago! I love to focus on just worshiping my Lord, it makes my work lighter and seems to go faster :-)
If I had to choose “my” song, it would be this one “In Christ Alone”. The reason, simple, I am nothing without Him. I find my purpose, my identity, my worth, my everything in Him….alone! Every time we sing that at church or it plays on Pandora, it literally brings me to tears! Especially these last lines:
No guilt in life, no fear in death—
This is the pow’r of Christ in me;
From life’s first cry to final breath,
Jesus commands my destiny.
No pow’r of hell, no scheme of man,
Can ever pluck me from His hand;
Till He returns or calls me home—
Here in the pow’r of Christ I’ll stand.
Oh what a Savior!!! :-)