“This music album is about my Take Two, starting life all over, a fresh start, an opportunity opened up from above, a time of compensation for a past life that I wouldn’t have chosen to live again but now a glad choice to do it “right.” So good. So much to talk, sing, and shout about!”

Imagine having a second shot at life, a Take Two!

“You’re kidding me, aren’t you?”

Normally, you would think so, but I’m serious. It happens, believe me. I’ve seen this on various levels and aspects of our lives. Some of you have seen it and may have experienced it in a fashion.

As a child, I saw two struggling neighbor farmers in Manitoba experience new starts. The Preslowskis suddenly lost their large home and everything in it to fire – a painful event. Forced to uproot, they started all over again in Etobicoke, Ontario.

Years later, Ralph and his wife returned for a visit to their old stomping grounds and declared, “It was the worst and the best thing that ever happened to us!” He had built up a prosperous trucking enterprise in Ontario.

Another neighbor, Bill and Elsie Chaykowski, decided with their children Dennis, Diane, and Miles to pack in their rags, callouses, hard work, sweat, tears, long hours, and dismal earnings for Alberta. Alberta bound! Though they began new careers, it was like retiring!

The Chaykowskis also revisited us years later and told us of their pleasant, cowboy country, “cow town” home city of Calgary, the famous Calgary Stampede, the fabulous Rocky Mountains with their peaks, forests, rivers, and lakes. The icing on the cake for these former Manitobans was the periodic winter weather breaks with warm chinook winds to bring winter cheer for freezing souls.

I’ve seen “Take Two’s” in the Bible, too. Consider Joseph who was raised directly from years of humbling prison to the second highest position in superpower Egypt. Job is a classic example where God brought horrendous loss to him, right to the edge of the grave, only to raise him up again, replace his lost children, and double his wealth and years on earth.

How are those for examples of a Take Two in this world! There are others.

For me, it’s been a Take Two these past few years I hadn’t dreamed of. Music! Singing! From a life of struggles, tears, troubles, trials, and sorrows to a level of victory, success, and happiness I had never enjoyed in my life of 70+ years. I didn’t know that in all my life, singing was in me, longing to be expressed.

From when I was 6 years old, the Voice of Song quietly called, but it wasn’t until recently that I began to sing and record the music that was in my soul. And what better thing could I sing than the songs God has given me since 1975 to the present, telling the world what He’s done for me? My son declared he had never seen me in that state of joy. He marveled. So did I!

This music album is about my Take Two, starting life all over, a fresh start, an opportunity opened up from above, a time of compensation for a past life that I wouldn’t have chosen to live again but now a glad choice to do it “right.” So good. So much to talk, sing, and shout about!