The Songs I Chose for Them

I Did Not Know I Was Starting a Tradition

When my first daughter was born, I found a song for her. I did not call it a tradition. I did not have a system. I had a heart full of something I could not say in ordinary words, and music has always been the place where the unsayable goes. So I found a song that carried what I was carrying — who God was making me at that moment, what I wanted her to know about the world she had arrived in, what I hoped she would grow into — and I gave it to her.

When my second daughter was born, I found another song. Same instinct, same overflow, same reaching for the medium that could hold what prose could not.

I did not realize until much later that I had been doing the same thing with each grandchild as they arrived. Twelve times now. The most recent just weeks ago, born while I was ninety days away. A face I had not yet seen. And I had already chosen her song.

That is when I understood: I have been composing blessings. Not in the formal sense — not the laying on of hands, not the priestly benediction, though those things have their place and their power. These are blessings in the older, deeper sense — a father or grandfather standing at the threshold of a new life, reaching into the best of what he knows and what he loves, and saying: here. This is what I want to give you. Not money, not advice, not a plan for your future. A song. And in the song, a window into who I was when you arrived — which is also a window into who you might become.

They will need to find the songs. They will need to listen. They will need to let them grow. But the songs will be there, waiting, for the moment they are ready.

Why Music

Music does something that words alone cannot. This is not a mystery — it is neuroscience, and it is theology, and they are saying the same thing from different directions.

The neuroscience: music encodes memory differently than language. A song heard at a moment of emotional significance is stored not just as information but as an experience — wired into the limbic system, into the emotional processing center of the brain, in a way that can be retrieved decades later with a single opening chord. The music carries the moment. The moment lives in the music.

The theology: from the very beginning, the people of God sang what they could not simply say. Moses and Miriam sang at the sea. Deborah sang after the battle. Hannah sang over the child she had begged from God. David sang in exile and in triumph and in the pit of despair. Mary sang when the child moved inside her. The Psalter is a century-spanning collection of songs precisely because there is a register of truth that only song can reach — a place in the human being that responds to melody and lyric together in ways that straightforward declaration cannot touch.

Benedictions are often sung. Laments are often sung. The deepest things, in the oldest traditions, are sung.

I did not plan any of this. I just found that when a child arrived — each one a new face, a new name, a new person stepping into the world — the thing that rose up in me reached instinctively for music.

The Song I Almost Chose

When my most recent granddaughter was born, I considered a song I have loved for a long time: Now That I've Held Him in My Arms by Michael Card. It is a setting of the Nunc Dimittis — Simeon's song from Luke 2, the old man in the temple who had been promised he would not die before he had seen the Messiah, and who, when Mary and Joseph brought the infant Jesus, took him in his arms and said: Lord, now let your servant depart in peace.

It is one of the most beautiful songs Michael Card has ever written. It is the sound of completion — of a man who has waited his whole life for one thing, and who has finally received it, and who is now at peace to go.

I did not choose it. Not because it isn't beautiful — it is. Not because I don't mean something like it when I hold a new grandchild — I do feel something like Simeon, the years of waiting for this moment, the weight of what is held in something so small. But I did not want the child to grow up and hear the song her grandfather chose for her and think: he was ready to go. That is not the message I wanted to give her. I was not standing at the end of something. I was standing at the beginning.

So I kept looking.

The Song I Chose

The Voice of the Child is also by Michael Card. It tells the story of an old rabbi — a scholar, a man of deep learning and long study — who encounters the boy Jesus in the temple. The rabbi sits at the feet of this child and his heart begins to beat for the things Jesus says. But then his pride gets in the way. He has a self-righteous show to maintain. He walks away.

He cannot stop thinking about it. Late in the night he wakes to a voice — gentle and mild, like the voice of a child — and in one holy moment, everything he has studied his whole life suddenly makes sense. The promises to Abraham. The prophecies he had read a thousand times. He sees it all clearly, sees that the child is the Messiah, and spends the rest of the song trying to find his way back to say: I'm sorry I walked away.

That is not Simeon's song. Simeon held the child and departed in peace. The old rabbi in this song walked away and spent the rest of his life trying to return. It is the song of a man who had all the knowledge and missed the moment — and who was given grace to find his way back.

I chose this song for my youngest granddaughter because of where I was when she was born.

I was ninety days from home. I had not yet seen her face. I was in the middle of a season of clarity — about pace, about presence, about the speed at which love actually moves — that had been building for months. I had been thinking about the old rabbi who walked away. About the self-righteous show that becomes a disguise. About the voice gentle and mild that speaks in the night when the noise finally quiets. About the moment when what you have studied your whole life suddenly, in one holy instant, makes sense.

I was not choosing a theme for her. I was being honest about where I was standing. This is the song from this season. This is what was stirring in me when you arrived.

What a Blessing Actually Is

In the Hebrew tradition, a blessing from a father or grandfather was not primarily a wish for good fortune. It was a transmission — the passing of something real from one generation to the next. Jacob wrestled all night for a blessing. Esau wept when his was given to the wrong son. The blessing carried weight because it carried identity, calling, and the particular love of the one who gave it.

The blessing said: I see you. I know you. I claim you. And I am giving you something of myself — of who I am, of what God has made me — to carry with you.

My songs are blessings in that sense. Each one is a window into who God was shaping me at the moment of that child's birth. Which means each one is a transmission: this is what your father was learning when you arrived. This is what was breaking open in him. This is what he wanted to give you from that season.

The child will not understand the blessing when they first receive it. Esau did not understand what he was forfeiting until it was gone. Jacob did not understand what he had been given until he had limped away from the wrestling match and spent decades living into it. The blessing is not for the moment of receiving. It is for the decades of growing.

When my youngest granddaughter is old enough to find the song — and she will find it, because I will make sure she knows it exists — she will hear an old rabbi looking for the Child he once walked away from. She will hear him say: I've just got to find him and tell him I'm sorry. She will hear the chorus calling her:

Come listen awhile to the voice of a Child. / Stand in awe of the wisdom of God. / Hear what He has to say. / For the time is today. / You can come or just walk away.

And if the blessing does what blessings are meant to do — if it grows in her the way seeds grow, slowly, at three miles per hour, in the soil of a life being lived — she will understand something about her grandfather. That he was a man who had walked away from things he should have stayed for. That he knew the sound of the voice gentle and mild in the night. That he spent his life trying to find his way back to the Child. That he was still trying when she was born.

And maybe, in understanding that, she will be a little less afraid to say her own I'm sorry I walked away. A little more willing to sit at the feet of the Child and let her heart begin to beat for the things He says.

That is the inheritance I am trying to give her. Not money. Not a plan. A song. And in the song, a grandfather who was still being formed when she arrived — and who wanted her to know it.

The Archive I Did Not Know I Was Keeping

I am realizing now that the fourteen songs together tell a story. Not a story I planned. A story God was writing through me across decades, one child at a time — a record of where I was, who I was becoming, what was breaking open or coming together in my soul at each arrival.

To go back through all of them would be to walk through my own formation. To hear again what was stirring in me when each face first appeared. To see the arc of a life being shaped — by loss, by joy, by the long slow work of a God who goes at three miles per hour and does not rush the process even when I want Him to.

That is work I need to do slowly. Each song deserves its own sitting-with, its own writing-through. Each child deserves to know not just the song but the season — what their father/grandfather was learning, what God was doing in him, why this song and not another.

This essay is the beginning of that work. The youngest grandchild's song is the door that opened onto the archive. I walked through it today and realized: there is a whole library in here. A library of blessings, waiting to be read.

I will come back to it. One song at a time. At three miles per hour.

To My Daughters and Grandchildren

I wrote this on the morning before I came home to you. Ninety days away. And sitting here with all of it — the frameworks, the new collection of documents, the clarity about pace — what moved me most was not any of that. It was your faces. The thought of walking through that door and seeing you. You seeing me. The delight I already feel in my chest just thinking about it.

This is for you. All fourteen of you. 17+ really. So close and then all the rest of you too who can also see in this the wonder of a God so gracious to us. With hope that a piece of this joy can be seen, felt, known.

The most important thing I can give you is not a song. It is an invitation — to the Place of Hearing. That is what everything in this garden points toward. It is the place where you and God are alone together, where His voice finds you, where you discover that you are loved before you have earned a single thing. Where the pressure to prove and perform goes quiet, and what remains is this: you are His beloved, and He is pleased with you.

Find that place. Live from it. Everything else built — every layer, every framework, every essay — is just an attempt to describe the road back to that place after I had wandered from it. You don't have to wander as far as I did. That is what I most want for you.

But if you are ever curious about who I was — if you want to taste a little of what God was doing in your father or your grandfather in a particular season of his life — go find your song. I chose one for each of you. Not randomly. Each one is a photograph of a moment. Each one carries something real: what was breaking open in me when your face first appeared, what I was still getting wrong, what grace was doing anyway, what I most wanted to give you that I couldn't hand you with my hands.

Listen to it more than once. Let it grow slowly. The blessing is not for the moment of first hearing. It is for the years of living into it.

And when you listen, here is what I hope you hear underneath the music: a man who loved you before he fully knew you. A man who was still being formed when you were born and is still being formed now. A man who ran a thousand miles one at a time and learned, slowly, that you have to relax in the run. A man who walked away from things he should have stayed for, and kept finding his way back to the Child. A man who asked God most mornings — sometimes desperately — would you Father me today? And who was answered with more grace than he deserved.

That man is yours. You are his. And those two things — that you are His, and that you are mine — are more than enough. You do not have to earn what is already freely given.

Come to the Place of Hearing first. Then, if you want, come find me and we'll talk about the song. I will always want to tell you about His seasons.

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Gary Springer
March 2026 — written the morning before coming home
grounded in Scripture, informed by neuroscience, offered freely