The Grandmother Who Hummed While She Worked

Maria Gonzalez never sang in front of people. Not once in seventy-three years. But her granddaughter Sofia, age four, knew a different woman. Every Saturday morning in the small kitchen on Maple Street in San Antonio, while Maria rolled out tortilla dough and Sofia sat cross-legged on the tile floor with her crayons, the old woman hummed. Not quietly. Not absently. Maria hummed with her whole chest — melodies that rose and fell like someone cradling a song too precious for words.

Sofia didn't know the tunes were old hymns from a clapboard church in Laredo. She didn't know her grandmother had buried a husband and two siblings. She only knew this: when Abuela hummed, the kitchen felt completely safe. The flour dust floated in the window light. The world outside stopped mattering. She could color outside the lines and nobody minded.

Years later, Sofia would tell her own children, "I never doubted I was loved. Not because Abuela said it — she wasn't one for speeches. I knew because she sang over me when she thought I wasn't listening."

Zephaniah 3:17 tells us the Lord your God is in your midst. He is mighty to save. And then this stunning detail — He will rejoice over you with loud singing. The Creator of the universe hums over you. Not because you earned it. Because His delight in you is so deep, it spills out as song.