Over the weekend my favorite radio station, K-Love, was having a fallback weekend for daylight savings so as we fall back, the radio station fell back to hits of the past decades. I almost didn’t tune in. I didn’t grow up listening to Christian music so the thought of listening to music I hadn’t heard before instead of belting out my favorite worship songs from the driver’s seat of my minivan didn’t hold much appeal to me. But then I decided to give it a shot. I turned K-Love on. It was song after song that I didn’t know, until the one that I did know. The familiar tinkling of a piano filled my ears and my senses, bringing me back to my early teen years in 1997 when I first heard this song. I’m a sucker for the sap, in case you didn’t know that yet. I always have. Even when I was going through my horror movie watching, goth wearing phase, that wasn’t the real me. The real me has always had a heart for the love stories, the happy endings, the Hallmark, if you will.

And as Bob Carlisle sang, “There’s two things I know for sure. She was sent here from heaven and she’s daddy’s little girl. As I drop to my knees by her bed at night, she talks to Jesus and I close my eyes. And I thank God for all of the joy in my life. Oh, but most of all.” Every word out of that man’s mouth hit me. I knew the tears were coming for me, just like years ago. The more I thought about it though, I really wondered why I even liked this song as a teenage girl. What even appealed to me? I wasn’t walking with the Lord at this point in my life and I also did not have the kind of relationship with either of my parents that Bob Carlisle sings about in this song. I think if I was really that horror movie loving girl who really did like Marilyn Manson and wasn’t just pretending because I was a little broken and needed some love in my life then I probably would have changed the dial every time that song came on in 1997. But I wasn’t. Underneath all of the baggy clothes, the hair dye, and the black make up, was a girl who longed for everything that Bob Carlisle sang about but I just didn’t know it at the time. “For butterfly kisses after bedtime prayer. Sticking little white flowers all up in her hair. Walk beside the pony daddy, it’s my first ride. I know the cake looks funny daddy but I sure tried. Oh, with all that I’ve done wrong I must have done something right. To deserve a hug every morning and butterfly kisses at night.”

If I could go back to 1997 and talk to that lost little girl, I would tell her that everything was going to be ok. I would tell her that although her family was not meeting her needs, that they were all doing the best they could, and although they didn’t show it in her love language, they did love her. I would tell her that happy endings and love stories don’t always end the way we envision them to, but that there is no greater love than the love of Jesus Christ. I would tell her that it is ok that her earthly mom and dad were a little broken and dysfunctional, they were never meant to be perfect, only Jesus is perfect and he could give that little girl all the love she could ever need or want.

Isn’t it funny, how things just hit different at different times in our lives. A song, a book, a movie, a bible passage. God gives us what we need when we need it. If he gave us all wisdom, knowledge, and information at once, though we think we want it, that wouldn’t be very merciful at all, and God is full of mercy. Our earthly brains and bodies can only handle so much. But God. God is greater and stronger and meets all of our needs. Even when I didn’t know him, even when I was a broken and lost teenage girl, he had a plan for my life. If I knew it then, I probably wouldn’t have believed it. But how wonderful, that I could hear Bob Carlisle on a pop radio station in 1997 singing about the blessings and the goodness of God when I didn’t feel like there was a single good thing in my life, and it gave me hope. And how wonderful that I could hear Bob Carlisle on a Christian radio station in 2025 and that it would speak to that broken little girl inside of me and make us both smile. Thanks be to God.