This weekend, a few friends and I headed to the big city to attend one of Deseret Book’s “Time Out for Women” conferences. I was excited to go and hear the speakers (including Mary Ellen Edmunds, Dean Hughes, Emily Watts, Camille Fronk Olson, Carolyn Rasmus, and even a surprise visit from Sheri Dew), but I was most anxious to be able to see Michael McLean (and Kenneth Cope) perform in person. I’ve always loved Michael McLean’s music, and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that in addition to being a fantastic musician, he is also very funny and sweet.

That would have been reward enough for me, but at the end of his performance on the first night, he agreed to take requests from members of the audience, and someone asked him to play “From God’s Arms, to My Arms, to Yours.” Not only did he play it, but he told the story of how he came to write it, which I’d never heard. Apparently a young, pregnant woman wrote to him (or called him – I can’t remember which) and told him that she had been struggling with whether to make an adoption plan for her baby, and she wanted him to write a song that would tell her story. He told her that he wanted to do it, but that he was at a loss to understand her feelings to be able to put them into a song. She helped Michael with the words, and he prayed about how best to put the song together. Finally, they came up the finished product:

So many wrong decisions in my past,
I'm not quite sure if I could ever hope to trust my judgment anymore.
But lately I've been thinking, because it's all I've had to do.
And in my heart I feel that I should give this child to you.

Chorus:

And maybe you can tell your baby when you love him so
that he's been loved before
by someone who delivered your son
from God's arms to my arms to yours.

And if you choose to tell him and if he wants to know
how the one who gave him life could bear to let him go,
just tell him there was sleepless nights I prayed and paced the floor
and knew the only peace I'd find is if this child was yours.

Chorus

I know that you don't have to do this, but could you kiss him once for me
the first time that he ties his shoe or falls or skins his knees
and could you hold him twice as long when he makes his first mistake
and try to tell him that he's not alone? Sometimes that's all it takes.
And he's not alone. I know how much he'll ache.

Chorus

This may not be the answer for another girl like me
and I'm not on a soap box singing how we all should be.
I'm just trusting in my feelings and I'm trusting God above,
and I'm trusting that you can give this baby both his mothers' love.

Michael finished up by saying that he had helped this sweet birthmom record a special version of this song for her son and his adoptive parents. I can’t even imagine what a priceless gift this would be to that family! Needless to say, I was reduced to a blubbering mess as I listened to him sing this beautiful and touching song. I thought about all our kids’ birthparents and the challenge it surely was for them to make the choices they did. I thought about the fact that I very often kiss and hug my kids for the birthparents, and I tell them that they are loved by both moms. Hearing this song reminded me how important it is for them to hear this, and to their birthmoms that I reassure them about this.

Photo credit: Michael McLean Music

You can browse through a wide variety of adoption-themed music here.