Four-year-old Oaklynn Tesimale introduced her family’s video by explaining, “My daddy wrote this song.” It is a song that helped their family during a hard day, and one that Oaklynn said she hopes “will help you too.”
Earlier this week, Oaklynn’s mom, Madison Tesimale, was feeling the frustration of the infertility she and her husband, Matthew, have experienced over the past year. What added to their fears is that Madison’s recent doctor's appointment had shown cancer markers. Matthew found his wife in tears last Sunday and he knew he wanted to find a way to help.
“When I saw my wife crying, I knew she was hurting, and I knew it was from what we’ve been struggling with for a year now. And things weren’t getting any emotionally easier with a global pandemic and nation-wide upheaval,” Matthew told LDS Living.
Matthew loves to write songs on the ukulele, but he hadn’t yet written his own sequence of chords to pair with lyrics, instead pulling chord progressions to other songs. But that changed as he saw his wife crying. Here is what he said happened next:
"I lay face up on the couch next to my wife with the ukulele in my hands I just started strumming chords I have known all my life. G, F, C, G. Simple, but the progression called out to me. I started singing under my breath and came up with the first line 'Sometimes you just gotta wonder "Why is this happening?"' That was when it all started flowing. I replayed that line and hummed random tunes afterwards trying to find a rhythm. Then the rest of the words just flowed. I created the song within a couple feet of my wife in about 10-15 minutes, but did it all under my breath and quiet because I knew I wanted to show her when I had it all finished so the entirety of the message could be heard. I think when I sang 'Why me' was when she started crying. "Seeing the peace that this song brought my wife is when I knew that the world needs to hear these words too! Because not only are we struggling as humanity right now, but we each still have our individual struggles that we are striving to push through and overcome. And Christ holds that peace that we all are seeking! We just gotta stand (or kneel) hand in hand, so He can do something."
After Matthew sang the song to Madison, she learned it as well and they made a recording with their two children to share with family and friends. Madison wrote on Facebook that “learning it and singing with the kids was exactly what we all needed!”
Matthews says that when he realized how easily the song came to be, he knew he didn’t create it alone. “God was there by our side,” he says.
Later that week, the Tesimale family received encouraging test results from the doctor that showed the cancer markers may not be as serious as they thought. As they move forward to try and figure out the cause of their infertility, the Tesimale family knows that God will be by their side, just as He was as Matthew wrote their song.
