Natalie Merchant - Wonder

Video from Natalie Merchant

Natalie Merchant - Wonder

"When she was a teenager, Natalie Merchant worked at a day camp for special needs children, many of whom had been institutionalized since infancy and abandoned by their parents. This song was inspired by that experience.

She explained on a VH1 Storytellers appearance: "When I was 13 years old, we're talking 1976, I spent my summer working as a volunteer for a bunch of hippies, basically, that got a seed grant from the Carter administration, which had a lot of really wonderful programs for the arts. These people started a day camp for handicapped children, and I worked for them the whole summer. A lot of these children were institutionalized - their parents had left the scene a long time ago. They didn't function so well in a conventional sense, but it seems that a lot of the children had developed like a private language or new senses so they could navigate through the world, especially the blind and the deaf children that we worked with.

From an early age, I had that contact with children who had special needs. I had lost my fear of intimacy with them - especially with Down syndrome kids, they could be really unpredictable and up to that point I had been a little frightened of them. I maintained some of the friendships with those kids and I was always open to meeting children with special needs. So when I wrote the song 'Wonder,' I wrote the song about a woman who was born with handicaps that seemed insurmountable, but she did overcome them, greatly because she had a loving family, especially her adoptive mother - she had been given up to an institution at birth."

This is a very meaningful song to many people who grew up with special needs and their caretakers. The song views these people as "wonders," with doctors having no explanation for their condition, but seeing the work of God in the creation.

"I've met a lot of people through this song, and they've told me that they've taken it on as their song, that it describes them," Merchant said. "It describes their strengths in spite of what others would see as deficiencies." from Songfacts.com

Lyrics:

Doctors have come

From distant cities

Just to see me,

Stand over my bed

Disbelieving what they're seeing.

They say I must be one of the wonders,

God's own creation,

Snd as far as they see they can offer

No explanation.

Newspapers ask

Intimate questions,

What confessions;

They reach into my head

To steal the glory

Of my story.

They say I must be one of the wonders,

God's own creation,

And as far as they see they can offer

No explanation.

I believe

Fate smiled at destiny.

Laughed as she came to my cradle:

"No, this child will be able"

Laughed as my body she lifted:

"No, this child will be gifted.

With love, with patience

And with faith,

She'll make her way"

People see me,

I'm a challenge

To your balance.

I'm over your heads;

How I confound you

And astound you

to know I must be one of the wonders,

God's own creation,

And as far as you see you can offer me

no explanation.

I believe

Fate smiled and destiny.

Laughed as she came to my cradle:

"No, this child will be able"

Laughed as she came to my mother:

"Know this child will not suffer."

Laughed as my body she lifted:

"No this child will be gifted.

With love, with patience,

And with faith,

She'll make her way."

#extraordinarygod