2003

Visit With Kyla - “Everyday Life”

"Everyday Life"

Commonplace occurrences, I have found, have the most extraordinary effect on me. More than ninety percent of my songs have been inspired through some ordinary event in the course of an average day.

What makes the ordinary turn to extraordinary, however, is my little "one-eyed wonder" sitting in a recliner in the living room. Her name is Eulalia, and she is my mother. There are those, who are familiar with some of my songs, who probably think I am gifted. They hear phrases in my songs and wonder, "Now, how did she think to say that?"

The truth usually is that I didn't think of it at all. God had a plan for me. He chose me to write songs, and He provided the means by which I could fulfill that calling; He gave Eulalia to me, to be my mother, mentor, inspiration and collaborator. While I am not particularly colorful or clever, she is. Not only that, but she has deep spiritual insight, coupled with the heart of a bonafide prayer warrior. When you mix these assets with long years of experience and set them down in your living room, you have a never-ending well of deeply moving ideas from which to draw.

I always knew Mother was unique. Everyone who knows her says that Eulalia is the most unforgetable character they have ever known, and God allows me to draw from her well daily. Twenty years ago, a few years after Daddy passed away, she built three rooms onto the back of our house. She is an invalid, now. She is blind in her left eye, crippled and bent from osteoporosis, and her memory is almost non-existent-except when God wants me to write a song that requires a story from her past.

I have thought often why God would leave her here so long. But out of this broken little body and mind come some extraordinary labors. Not a day goes by that she doesn't pray for sinners. She prays for the cold, the hungry and hurting, and she labors in prayer for God's men; those who are chosen and anointed to stand behind the sacred desk.

It is my contention that the power of her works has not diminished with the ravishes of old age. And so God leaves her here because He knows He can count on her to be faithful to the task for which He called her.

Then there are the songs. About a year ago she was, as usual, in much pain.

She said, "Let's pray, Kyla."

As she bowed her head, her first words were, "Lord, just want to thank you for bringing us "Safe Thus Far."

How hard was it to write this simple little song after that? God's presence was so big in that room I fairly floated to my piano. It was just another ordinary day with Eulalia and the Lord.

Kyla Rowland

http://www.kylarowland.com