Super Soap

There are some songs you intentionally remember.

And then there are songs that apparently move into your brain, refuse to pay rent, and remain there for the next thirty years.

“Super Soap” is one of those songs.

The story actually starts the year before I learned it, when I was somewhere in my early twenties and somebody made the questionable decision to give me a Vacation Bible School class of approximately twelve two- and three-year-olds.

By myself.

I’m not sure what happened in the planning meeting that led everyone to believe this was a good idea, but by the end of that week, I was traumatized.

Those children were adorable.

They were also two and three.

There were twelve of them.

And there was one of me.

By Friday, I had pretty much decided children were not the game for me.

I would make another run at teaching young children much later, volunteering in my mom’s classroom. That experience would officially seal my fate.

Teaching little kids was not my calling.

God bless the people who do it.

Seriously.

Give them crowns.

And Then Came Family Camp

Fast forward about a year.

I was asked to help with a classroom of four- and five-year-olds at a family camp I had grown up attending.

You can imagine my hesitation.

I had already survived the Great VBS Incident of the Previous Year and had no desire to return to active combat.

But a friend of mine had asked me to help with music and with one of the classrooms, so somehow I agreed.

And four- and five-year-olds?

Completely different species.

Holy smokes, they were adorable.

They said the wildest things. They could actually communicate what they wanted. Mostly. And they had enough personality to keep you laughing constantly.

At some point during the week, I apparently became comfortable enough that I fell asleep on one of their nap mats.

When I woke up, they were all sitting around me on the floor.

Just watching me sleep.

Had my friend not been there with them, I might have wondered whether a tiny coup was forming.

But the second I opened my eyes, they all started laughing.

Apparently watching the teacher sleep was quality entertainment.

Those are the kinds of moments that stay with you.

A Connection I Wouldn’t Understand Until Years Later

The hermanos in charge of that classroom would eventually turn out to be the parents of one of my good friends from my time at West Campus in the early 2000s.

We didn’t make that connection until much later.

And years afterward, her mom would be the one who supplied the photo I still have from that week.

I love things like that.

At the time, it was just another camp. Another classroom. Another group of people God had placed in my life for a few days.

Years later, I could see the threads connecting people and seasons that I never would have connected on my own.

God was already working in ways I couldn’t see yet.

The Song

We were staying in the dorms with the other college-age girls helping with camp.

Between most of the dorm rooms was a middle conference room/classroom area, and ours became headquarters for preparing whatever chaos we had planned for the children the next day.

Crafts.

Lessons.

Activities.

Music.

Lots of music.

And somewhere in the middle of all of that, we practiced a song that included the line:

“When I take a bath, I think about the Lord. He cleansed me with His super soap.”

Super soap.

Why did that song stay with me?

I have absolutely no idea.

But it did.

It belongs in the same category as the “Recipe Song” from Psalty.

If you grew up in church during a certain era, you know exactly what I mean. Some of those songs embedded themselves so deeply into your memory that decades later somebody can say three words and suddenly you know the entire melody.

For instance: “Father Abraham….” (Did you finish the song?)

The funny thing is that I had performed the Psalty song at that very same camp when I was in fourth or fifth grade.

So by the time I was standing there as a college-aged volunteer teaching another generation of kids ridiculous-but-surprisingly-effective Christian songs, I was already standing inside layers of my own memories.

More Than a Camp

Family camp carries a lot of core memories for me.

It’s where I met a number of people who are still my friends today.

It’s connected to childhood.

Music.

Church.

Friendship.

Growing up.

Serving.

And my faith.

Some places become part of your spiritual geography.

You can remember where you were sitting when something clicked.

You remember the songs.

The people.

The laughter.

The ridiculous things that happened.

You may not remember every sermon that was preached, but somehow you remember:

“He cleansed me with His super soap.”

Apparently theology delivered through bath-time imagery has staying power.

Cleaning Church and Growing Up

Years later, during my time serving at West Campus, I was a youth leader.

And being a youth leader meant a lot more than standing in front of teenagers with a Bible.

We served.

We set things up.

We tore things down.

We helped wherever we were needed.

And we took turns cleaning the church.

There is something wonderfully unglamorous about church service.

Sometimes ministry looks like microphones and music.

Sometimes it looks like mentoring a teenager through something difficult.

And sometimes it looks like taking out trash, wiping down a bathroom, vacuuming floors, or wondering how one congregation managed to produce that many crumbs in seven days.

Somewhere in all of those years, that ridiculous little childhood song and the reality of serving began occupying the same space in my memory.

Cleaning.

Soap.

Being made clean.

Serving the people of God.

And realizing that faith is lived just as much in ordinary work as it is in the moments we usually label “ministry.”

So Eventually, I Wrote “Super Soap”

That is where this song comes from.

Not one single moment.

A collection of them.

A traumatizing VBS classroom.

A second chance with four- and five-year-olds.

A possible preschool coup.

Dorm-room preparation sessions.

A children’s song that refused to leave my brain.

Family camp.

Old friends.

Unexpected connections.

Years of serving at church.

And the realization that God has a funny way of taking things that seemed completely insignificant at the time and giving them meaning later.

I certainly wasn’t standing in that camp classroom in my twenties thinking:

“One day this is going to become a song.”

I was probably thinking:

“Please let all of these children go home with the correct parents.”

But that is one of the things I love about creating music now.

I get to go back and pick up pieces of my own history.

Sometimes they are painful.

Sometimes deeply spiritual.

Sometimes profound.

And sometimes they involve soap.

“Super Soap” comes from one of those memories that makes me smile because it reminds me how long God has been weaving together people, places, music, service, and faith in my life.

Long before I knew what any of it would become.

And maybe that’s why the song stuck.

Because underneath the silly lyrics was a truth simple enough for a four-year-old and deep enough to spend a lifetime understanding:

God cleans us up.

God changes us.

And somehow, He keeps using the most unexpected things to remind us.

Even super soap.