My Grown-up Christmas List

	Amy Grant - Grown Up Christmas List .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

Click on the link above. This has been one of my favorite Christmas songs since I first heard it some 16-17 years ago. I think the appeal lies in the fact that it gets down to the basics and pulls at the heart strings, and speaks more volumes than most other modern Christmas songs. I got choked up when I first heard it so long ago (my first Christmas in a new town, and away from the home I'd known for so many years.) and I still get choked up when I hear it. It's been covered quite a few times over the years by artists like Kelly Clarkson, and Michael Buble, but they tend to cut parts out and lack the effect that Amy Grant's has on me.
You may ask why the song has such an effect on me. I've always been what most people refer to as a "sap" (in other words, my sense of empathy is stronger than most.) I get choked up at the save the children commercials, or the ASPCA commercials with Sarah McLaughlin (those especially get to me), and just knowing that others are suffering hurts me to no end. This song is probably as close to my own, real Christmas wish than anything else. I have seen close friends living in a homeless shelter over the holidays with no family or friends to spend them with (This year is probably going the be the best Christmas she'll have in a long time, since she's got her daughter back with her, and is at least living with a degree of comfort. This makes me happier than any gift that anyone could give me.) and I have seen others lose everything just before the holidays in a house fire. Christmas for myself hasn't been the same since my grandmother died just a week before Christmas 14 years ago. Every Christmas, my prayer remains the same, "Please God, hear my list!"

"Do you remember me?
I sat upon your knee;
I wrote to you
With childhood fantasies.

Well, I'm all grown-up now,
And still need help somehow.(can you still help somehow)
I?m not a child,
But my heart still can dream.

So here's my lifelong wish,
My grown-up christmas list.
Not for myself,
But for a world in need.

No more lives torn apart,
That wars would never start,
And time would heal all hearts.
And everyone would have a friend,
And right would always win,
And love would never end.
This is my grown-up christmas list.

As children we believed
The grandest sight to see
Was something lovely
Wrapped beneath our tree.

Well, heaven surely knows
That packages and bows
Can never heal
A hurting human soul.

No more lives torn apart,
That wars would never start,
And time would heal all hearts.
And everyone would have a friend,
And right would always win,
And love would never end.
This is my grown-up christmas list.

What is this illusion called the innocence of youth?
Maybe only in our blind belief can we ever find the truth.
(there'd be)

No more lives torn apart,
That wars would never start,
And time would heal all hearts.
And everyone would have a friend,
And right would always win,
And love would never end, oh.
This is my grown-up christmas list.
This is my only life-long wish.
This is my grown-up christmas list."