Once I saw a brain teaser that said, "Am I a nerd because I like Star Wars, or do I like Star Wars because I'm a nerd?" I think the answer is more complicated than that. Liking any particular thing does not make you a nerd. To be a nerd means you're passionate about something, and you express that passion in a particular *way.*
Here's an example. I have a friend who is a positive nerd for one particular football team. At any given time, he can name players and coaches, (past or present,) with something about their backgrounds and/or previous experience, their strengths, their weaknesses, where they are playing/coaching now and what happened to make them transfer. He knows history-making moments for the team and which year each happened, including the situations surrounding them! He knows all the game mechanics of football, all sorts of strategies, all the rules, all the penalties, and all the stats (previous or current year!) The man is a walking encyclopedia of information on this team. It never fails to astonish me.
Even though it's football, (which is not generally something we associate with "nerdiness,") he's a nerd *about* it. All of the the ins and outs and obscure trivia about his team interest him. All of it is important to him. People tend to think of nerds as people interested in certain things, (comics, fantasy, sci-fi, video games, etc.) but someone can be a nerd about, say, nutrition, or fashion, or language, or cars, or the flying mechanics of birds of prey. Anything that makes your eyes light up when someone asks you about it. Anything that you're crazy about that affects every part of your personality. Being a nerd is, to put it simply, allowing yourself to like something that you find compelling, and the willingness to continually learn more about it and participate in it if/when you can.
There are quite a few things I am a nerd about, but none, I think, are as close to my heart as my love for choir. I am a choir nerd.
I've been singing ever since I could talk. I don't remember a time before I loved to sing. It was just always in my nature to express my thoughts and emotions with singing. Thankfully, my parents encouraged it, though I know there were days when they wanted to tear their hair out because I would never shut up.
I always have been an "auditory learner." I memorize things quickly if I can hear them chanted or sung. Whether it was songs, movies, or sections of Scripture, if I could hear them fairly frequently I could remember them with surprising accuracy. My continuous quoting got on my parents' nerves all the time, I fear. But they stuck it out.
Both my parents are singers, so they were teaching me proper singing techniques from my tender years.
"When you sing, you stand up straight, you don't want to be leaning up against anything."
"Take a deep breath, and sing all the way to here before you take the next breath."
"Can you sing this note? What about this one? No, no, don't squeak it out. Deep breath, full voice, project!"
My parents taught us hymns and encouraged us to learn songs and to memorize Scripture. They played good quality music when they drove us places. I memorized all the lyrics in "The Sound of Music," before I was ten years old. Along with...ahem...various and sundry other forms of media.
I was in my church's children's choirs for as far back as I can remember. In children's choir, the directors taught us to breathe using our lungs' full capacity. They taught us to stand still, with our arms down by our sides when we sang. We learned to watch the conductor's every movement for cues. They gave prizes to children who learned hymns. We learned how to sing loudly and softly, and how to transition from one to the other. They taught us that when you sing, your vowels are pronounced differently from the way you normally say them in conversation. For example, to sing, "What child is this who laid to rest, on Mary's lap is sleeping," you would pronounce it in your song more like:
"Whot chald is this who laid to rest on Mah-ry's la-ahp is sli-ee-ping?"
Tall vowels, a bit British-sounding. A's become Ah's. E's are loose and open, not spread side-to-side the way we speak them. With I's, you really only sing the first part of the sound, and you don't bite the "ee" sound down on them the way we do when we speak them; (at least not until the very last second to enunciate the following consonant.) It would sound more like "Ah," than "Eye." O's are very round and open and soft, not closed off at the lips. U's are delicate, more like the way a queen might say, "You, boy!" and not the way we say the word "ewe," (or "Yew.") My illustration, by the way, not any of my conductors'!
The reason all the vowels have to be so tall is because when you sing, you can only sustain notes on vowel sounds, not consonants! (If you just tried to sing one or two consonants, know that I'm smiling at you.) Thus, you sing the vowels for as long as possible, and you squish the consonants in between vowels. However, it's vital for the consonants to be crisp and sharp, otherwise how will the audience be able to understand the words?
Of course, all these lessons were only reinforcing what I'd already learned at home. My parents sang that way, and so did the artists in the music they had us listen to. So naturally, I imitated those techniques when I sang.
Also, my parents had each of their children take three years of piano lessons. We all learned to read music, along with all the signs and terms, and the basics of music theory. When I look back on my childhood, it seems like a strangely unified education in music. After I quit piano, I studied the violin until I graduated high school. I could write a whole different post about all my experiences in orchestras; my private lessons, church orchestra, and the youth orchestra program in the state. All three were very different, yet they each brought their own unique pleasure and quality of enjoyment, each completing what the others lacked.
I loved my time as an instrumentalist, but voice is really where my heart is. My voice is inextricably bound up in my personality; a vital part of all my strengths.
I was born with the desire to express and to describe. When I was little, I could never stop talking because I wanted to share the things I saw in my mind's eye. That desire still burns relentlessly within me. I love to tell stories, I yearn to show people things they've never thought of before. What's more, I thirst to hear other people's stories, and all the things they have to say. The more I listen, the more I can learn, and think on. Everything I hear I gather into my soul, and I explore them, play with them, stretch them, turn them, relate to them, puzzle over them. Every concept connects to everything else, and the more I learn, the more I understand about life. The more I think on what others say, the more I can understand people. And the more I understand people, the better equipped I am to offer pieces of the puzzle to them that they might be missing. To see the look of dawning comprehension on someone's face is an exquisite pleasure. When something finally clicks for them, when something finally makes sense...and to know that I was able to give them that? There's nothing quite like it.
I use my voice for diplomacy and for peace-making. When I know what someone wants, I know how to help them. When I get to reconcile two parties and help them to get on the same page, my stomach flutters with this thrill that tells me I'm doing what I'm meant to do.
I use my voice to sing because I cannot hold it in. I've often felt that when the Lord was "knitting me together in my mother's womb," He imbued Music into my soul, into the very core of my being. It will not be silenced.
It has always seemed to me that there is music playing in me. Not the kind of music you can hear, or even always *think*. It's just...there. Perhaps it's because, to me, emotions are synonymous with music. They do say music is the language of the soul. It's very hard to explain this kind of thing. Maybe I can say it like this: my feelings naturally translate into music. And when I feel things strongly, my voice begins to hum or sing, and the emotions come out as music.
In my darkest hours, the themes are minor-keyed and treacherous. In my bitterness, they are a cacophony of discord. In my resentments, they twist and writhe, howl and rage. In my fear, they are ascending and descending minor arpeggios. When I (day)dream, the themes are expansive and ethereal. In my laughter, they swoop and trill like songbirds. In my sadness, they are deep-toned and groaning. When I'm wistful, they are ballads with broken chords. When I grieve, they wail in weeping phrases. When I'm happy, they swing or march. In my delight, they waltz. And in my Joy, they can be almost anything. But never silence. Never, never silence. I wonder if this is what King David meant when he wrote of his "songs" to the Lord; the cries of his heart, his "songs in the night."
"I sing, for I cannot be silent, His love is theme of my song," the hymn-writer says.
"All my life was wrecked by sin and strife
Discord filled my heart with pain
Jesus swept across the broken strings
Stirred the slumb'ring chords again.
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, sweetest name I know
Fills my every longing
Keeps me singing as I go."
When I sang in children's choirs, the music seemed to engulf me and sweep me into another world. I used to get so frustrated at the songs chosen for us. I'd hear the introduction, and it would be so delicate and yearning that I would be practically squirming with anticipation to learn it, to take it into my mind to treasure forever. But when it came to the actual melodies, they were simple and narrow. Quite tiresome if sung by themselves. The accompaniment was what made it lovely. There would be no harmonies, or precious few of them. The simplicity of it ground on my nerves.
My parents had us sit in the next room during their choir rehearsals. I eagerly drank in every anthem they learned. I had them memorized by the time they sang them in church. I ached to partake of those subtleties. Such an abundance of words and themes was a veritable feast to my soul.
I was eleven when I aged out of the children's choirs. I wasn't in a choir again until I was fourteen. Just three years, I suppose, but how horribly long those three years were! Also, a LOT happened to me emotionally within those three years! It makes it seem like an age.
My parents brought me to join the choir at our new church when I was fourteen. My voice had faded from lack of use. I have always been a soprano, but I couldn't even hit the E at the top space of the treble clef! Yeah. I remember feeling dismayed, but also, inexplicably, strangely gratified. I could tell I was going to be challenged. This was going to be the real deal, actual anthems for adult voices! And I was going to learn them, I had no doubt about that.
When I sang with the choir, I felt like I was on holy ground. My beauty-loving soul thirstily drank it all in. The beauty of the melodies enraptured me. We were given CDs with recordings of the anthems to help us learn them. I listened to them on my boom box, and I put them on my MP3 player and devoured them every day and everywhere I could. When we got up to sing them Sunday mornings, I had each memorized completely. I held my folder and turned the pages mechanically, but I didn't need to look down at them.
There's just something about singing truth in such beautiful songs that does something to me. Again, I don't know how to explain it. My mind, my emotions, even my body responds in elation when I hear or sing them. It just makes me so happy. Even singing lament anthems or somber ones. There's this joy that wells up inside me, and I feel like it must be brimming over, shining out of me. When I'm singing, I know just who I am. I'm not afraid. I feel at peace, at rest, deep down inside.
I don't get stage fright when I'm going to sing. I mean, if I'm singing a solo or something, sure, I'll be a little nervous. My knees will shake a little, my palms may get sweaty, my voice might wobble a bit at the start. But once the music really gets going, the nerves drop away. I *know* what I'm doing. I'm prepared. And I absolutely love performing. I know that sounds prideful, perhaps, but it is the truth. I get to communicate something important to so many people. I get to use my voice to make pleasing music for them! Voice is the one thing I know I do well enough that I don't have to doubt myself. When I perform, I want people to forget their sympathetic nervousness for me, and just enjoy the beauty of the song, and the truth it conveys.
Music is just one of the many ways God calls people and gets their attention. If God uses my voice in song to draw souls closer to Himself, I have not lived in vain. When I sing, I know that I'm doing what I was created to do. I'm just where I need to be. I like feeling that way.
Now, I've noticed choirs with adult musicians usually are made up of chill folks. I'm sure professional singers tend to be rather snooty, or divas, that kind of thing. But in our choir, nobody has delusions about themselves. We're all there because we love to sing, and we all love the Lord that we praise when we sing. I think I've been very lucky with conductors all my life. All of them, especially the music pastors, have had excellent senses of humor, and the choir always responds in kind.
I can still remember how astonished I was as an over-serious teenager hearing grown adults cutting up and cracking jokes in rehearsals. I hadn't known adults could be so fun to be around. One of the reasons I had been so adverse to growing up was because I had come to the conclusion that adults had to be serious and stuffy all the time. And one reason I had become so over-serious was because I had grown resigned to that idea. Each rehearsal lit a little flame deep within me, fanned the tiniest flicker of hope that maybe life wouldn't always be so...monotonous. So grey, so dull. That maybe if grown adults could kick back and laugh easily sometimes and still be respected, then maybe I could too. These adults were young at heart and--and happy. So...what if I could be that way, too?
The sadness and resignation that had become the fundamental truths of my personality at last began to give way. It was like a ray of light that found me in a prison cell; coaxing me out into the sun. Getting to feel happy again was like rediscovering colors, or recovering your sense of taste after a long sickness. It was marvelous to laugh again, to really feel like laughing, and to occasionally be made helpless by it.
Music, laughter, and most of all Truth came flooding into me, wrenching open the windows that I had long kept nailed shut, sweeping away the cobwebs in my brain, purging my fears that lay in cluttered piles, washing and scrubbing and rinsing the grime off everything, refurnishing, reorganizing, redecorating everything with cheery new thoughts, and lighting lamps and hanging them up everywhere. Shadows were banished. Like boggarts, my mind's troubles and insecurities fled and dissipated before laughter.
Singing still cleanses my soul to this day. When my heart goes sour, some good music helps to put it back in tune. If I'm lost in a labyrinth of motives and worries, singing songs full of truth shows me the way out.
When I get to sing for people, it's like I get to show them the way out, too. It's a pleasure greater than any fame or stardom the world can offer. That's why I'm a choir nerd. I hate it when choir ends for the summer, and I'm always itching for it to start again in August.
As the Autumn weather approaches (little by little!) I associate its beauty with the new songs I will learn when choir begins again. I gladly hammer out the difficult passages on the piano until they feel natural to me. I get to taste Christmas as we rehearse the music for our December concert. Fall and Christmas are deeply linked in my mind. I can't really experience one without the other.
A few weeks ago I was looking for a Christmas anthem for my family to perform this Christmas Eve. I eagerly opened the first file drawer, and thrilled to my fingertips as I saw all the old sheet music. To me it felt like browsing through tomes of ancient magical lore. (Think Gandalf elbow-deep in scrolls and parchments in the library of Gondor here!) Old anthems were like dear friends, hailing me with scores of happy memories. I went on browsing gleefully through every drawer, hunting a particular song. I do believe I would have made a delightful study for a manga-artist in that moment: standing on my tiptoes to peer into file drawers nearly as tall as me, my nose close to the label tabs, my hands busy and rummaging, my hair falling around my delighted face.
Long rehearsals are my glory. It doesn't matter how long a rehearsal is scheduled, you cannot daunt me with it. I saw a meme of a nerdy-looking kid with glasses that said, "Has a three-hour rehearsal---thinks it will be fun," and I just laughed. Story of my life. I do find it fun. Fun, refreshing, invigorating, even outright energizing.
In the New Heavens and the New Earth, I'll be able to sing as much as I could desire. We're children of a singing God, after all. He sings, so we should too.
But until then, this is my prayer:
"I love you, Lord
And I lift my voice to worship You.
Oh my soul, rejoice!
Take joy, my King in what you hear!
May it be a sweet, sweet sound in your ear!"
~Cadenza
Here's an example. I have a friend who is a positive nerd for one particular football team. At any given time, he can name players and coaches, (past or present,) with something about their backgrounds and/or previous experience, their strengths, their weaknesses, where they are playing/coaching now and what happened to make them transfer. He knows history-making moments for the team and which year each happened, including the situations surrounding them! He knows all the game mechanics of football, all sorts of strategies, all the rules, all the penalties, and all the stats (previous or current year!) The man is a walking encyclopedia of information on this team. It never fails to astonish me.
Even though it's football, (which is not generally something we associate with "nerdiness,") he's a nerd *about* it. All of the the ins and outs and obscure trivia about his team interest him. All of it is important to him. People tend to think of nerds as people interested in certain things, (comics, fantasy, sci-fi, video games, etc.) but someone can be a nerd about, say, nutrition, or fashion, or language, or cars, or the flying mechanics of birds of prey. Anything that makes your eyes light up when someone asks you about it. Anything that you're crazy about that affects every part of your personality. Being a nerd is, to put it simply, allowing yourself to like something that you find compelling, and the willingness to continually learn more about it and participate in it if/when you can.
There are quite a few things I am a nerd about, but none, I think, are as close to my heart as my love for choir. I am a choir nerd.
I've been singing ever since I could talk. I don't remember a time before I loved to sing. It was just always in my nature to express my thoughts and emotions with singing. Thankfully, my parents encouraged it, though I know there were days when they wanted to tear their hair out because I would never shut up.
I always have been an "auditory learner." I memorize things quickly if I can hear them chanted or sung. Whether it was songs, movies, or sections of Scripture, if I could hear them fairly frequently I could remember them with surprising accuracy. My continuous quoting got on my parents' nerves all the time, I fear. But they stuck it out.
Both my parents are singers, so they were teaching me proper singing techniques from my tender years.
"When you sing, you stand up straight, you don't want to be leaning up against anything."
"Take a deep breath, and sing all the way to here before you take the next breath."
"Can you sing this note? What about this one? No, no, don't squeak it out. Deep breath, full voice, project!"
My parents taught us hymns and encouraged us to learn songs and to memorize Scripture. They played good quality music when they drove us places. I memorized all the lyrics in "The Sound of Music," before I was ten years old. Along with...ahem...various and sundry other forms of media.
I was in my church's children's choirs for as far back as I can remember. In children's choir, the directors taught us to breathe using our lungs' full capacity. They taught us to stand still, with our arms down by our sides when we sang. We learned to watch the conductor's every movement for cues. They gave prizes to children who learned hymns. We learned how to sing loudly and softly, and how to transition from one to the other. They taught us that when you sing, your vowels are pronounced differently from the way you normally say them in conversation. For example, to sing, "What child is this who laid to rest, on Mary's lap is sleeping," you would pronounce it in your song more like:
"Whot chald is this who laid to rest on Mah-ry's la-ahp is sli-ee-ping?"
Tall vowels, a bit British-sounding. A's become Ah's. E's are loose and open, not spread side-to-side the way we speak them. With I's, you really only sing the first part of the sound, and you don't bite the "ee" sound down on them the way we do when we speak them; (at least not until the very last second to enunciate the following consonant.) It would sound more like "Ah," than "Eye." O's are very round and open and soft, not closed off at the lips. U's are delicate, more like the way a queen might say, "You, boy!" and not the way we say the word "ewe," (or "Yew.") My illustration, by the way, not any of my conductors'!
The reason all the vowels have to be so tall is because when you sing, you can only sustain notes on vowel sounds, not consonants! (If you just tried to sing one or two consonants, know that I'm smiling at you.) Thus, you sing the vowels for as long as possible, and you squish the consonants in between vowels. However, it's vital for the consonants to be crisp and sharp, otherwise how will the audience be able to understand the words?
Of course, all these lessons were only reinforcing what I'd already learned at home. My parents sang that way, and so did the artists in the music they had us listen to. So naturally, I imitated those techniques when I sang.
Also, my parents had each of their children take three years of piano lessons. We all learned to read music, along with all the signs and terms, and the basics of music theory. When I look back on my childhood, it seems like a strangely unified education in music. After I quit piano, I studied the violin until I graduated high school. I could write a whole different post about all my experiences in orchestras; my private lessons, church orchestra, and the youth orchestra program in the state. All three were very different, yet they each brought their own unique pleasure and quality of enjoyment, each completing what the others lacked.
I loved my time as an instrumentalist, but voice is really where my heart is. My voice is inextricably bound up in my personality; a vital part of all my strengths.
I was born with the desire to express and to describe. When I was little, I could never stop talking because I wanted to share the things I saw in my mind's eye. That desire still burns relentlessly within me. I love to tell stories, I yearn to show people things they've never thought of before. What's more, I thirst to hear other people's stories, and all the things they have to say. The more I listen, the more I can learn, and think on. Everything I hear I gather into my soul, and I explore them, play with them, stretch them, turn them, relate to them, puzzle over them. Every concept connects to everything else, and the more I learn, the more I understand about life. The more I think on what others say, the more I can understand people. And the more I understand people, the better equipped I am to offer pieces of the puzzle to them that they might be missing. To see the look of dawning comprehension on someone's face is an exquisite pleasure. When something finally clicks for them, when something finally makes sense...and to know that I was able to give them that? There's nothing quite like it.
I use my voice for diplomacy and for peace-making. When I know what someone wants, I know how to help them. When I get to reconcile two parties and help them to get on the same page, my stomach flutters with this thrill that tells me I'm doing what I'm meant to do.
I use my voice to sing because I cannot hold it in. I've often felt that when the Lord was "knitting me together in my mother's womb," He imbued Music into my soul, into the very core of my being. It will not be silenced.
It has always seemed to me that there is music playing in me. Not the kind of music you can hear, or even always *think*. It's just...there. Perhaps it's because, to me, emotions are synonymous with music. They do say music is the language of the soul. It's very hard to explain this kind of thing. Maybe I can say it like this: my feelings naturally translate into music. And when I feel things strongly, my voice begins to hum or sing, and the emotions come out as music.
In my darkest hours, the themes are minor-keyed and treacherous. In my bitterness, they are a cacophony of discord. In my resentments, they twist and writhe, howl and rage. In my fear, they are ascending and descending minor arpeggios. When I (day)dream, the themes are expansive and ethereal. In my laughter, they swoop and trill like songbirds. In my sadness, they are deep-toned and groaning. When I'm wistful, they are ballads with broken chords. When I grieve, they wail in weeping phrases. When I'm happy, they swing or march. In my delight, they waltz. And in my Joy, they can be almost anything. But never silence. Never, never silence. I wonder if this is what King David meant when he wrote of his "songs" to the Lord; the cries of his heart, his "songs in the night."
"I sing, for I cannot be silent, His love is theme of my song," the hymn-writer says.
"All my life was wrecked by sin and strife
Discord filled my heart with pain
Jesus swept across the broken strings
Stirred the slumb'ring chords again.
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, sweetest name I know
Fills my every longing
Keeps me singing as I go."
When I sang in children's choirs, the music seemed to engulf me and sweep me into another world. I used to get so frustrated at the songs chosen for us. I'd hear the introduction, and it would be so delicate and yearning that I would be practically squirming with anticipation to learn it, to take it into my mind to treasure forever. But when it came to the actual melodies, they were simple and narrow. Quite tiresome if sung by themselves. The accompaniment was what made it lovely. There would be no harmonies, or precious few of them. The simplicity of it ground on my nerves.
My parents had us sit in the next room during their choir rehearsals. I eagerly drank in every anthem they learned. I had them memorized by the time they sang them in church. I ached to partake of those subtleties. Such an abundance of words and themes was a veritable feast to my soul.
I was eleven when I aged out of the children's choirs. I wasn't in a choir again until I was fourteen. Just three years, I suppose, but how horribly long those three years were! Also, a LOT happened to me emotionally within those three years! It makes it seem like an age.
My parents brought me to join the choir at our new church when I was fourteen. My voice had faded from lack of use. I have always been a soprano, but I couldn't even hit the E at the top space of the treble clef! Yeah. I remember feeling dismayed, but also, inexplicably, strangely gratified. I could tell I was going to be challenged. This was going to be the real deal, actual anthems for adult voices! And I was going to learn them, I had no doubt about that.
When I sang with the choir, I felt like I was on holy ground. My beauty-loving soul thirstily drank it all in. The beauty of the melodies enraptured me. We were given CDs with recordings of the anthems to help us learn them. I listened to them on my boom box, and I put them on my MP3 player and devoured them every day and everywhere I could. When we got up to sing them Sunday mornings, I had each memorized completely. I held my folder and turned the pages mechanically, but I didn't need to look down at them.
There's just something about singing truth in such beautiful songs that does something to me. Again, I don't know how to explain it. My mind, my emotions, even my body responds in elation when I hear or sing them. It just makes me so happy. Even singing lament anthems or somber ones. There's this joy that wells up inside me, and I feel like it must be brimming over, shining out of me. When I'm singing, I know just who I am. I'm not afraid. I feel at peace, at rest, deep down inside.
I don't get stage fright when I'm going to sing. I mean, if I'm singing a solo or something, sure, I'll be a little nervous. My knees will shake a little, my palms may get sweaty, my voice might wobble a bit at the start. But once the music really gets going, the nerves drop away. I *know* what I'm doing. I'm prepared. And I absolutely love performing. I know that sounds prideful, perhaps, but it is the truth. I get to communicate something important to so many people. I get to use my voice to make pleasing music for them! Voice is the one thing I know I do well enough that I don't have to doubt myself. When I perform, I want people to forget their sympathetic nervousness for me, and just enjoy the beauty of the song, and the truth it conveys.
Music is just one of the many ways God calls people and gets their attention. If God uses my voice in song to draw souls closer to Himself, I have not lived in vain. When I sing, I know that I'm doing what I was created to do. I'm just where I need to be. I like feeling that way.
Now, I've noticed choirs with adult musicians usually are made up of chill folks. I'm sure professional singers tend to be rather snooty, or divas, that kind of thing. But in our choir, nobody has delusions about themselves. We're all there because we love to sing, and we all love the Lord that we praise when we sing. I think I've been very lucky with conductors all my life. All of them, especially the music pastors, have had excellent senses of humor, and the choir always responds in kind.
I can still remember how astonished I was as an over-serious teenager hearing grown adults cutting up and cracking jokes in rehearsals. I hadn't known adults could be so fun to be around. One of the reasons I had been so adverse to growing up was because I had come to the conclusion that adults had to be serious and stuffy all the time. And one reason I had become so over-serious was because I had grown resigned to that idea. Each rehearsal lit a little flame deep within me, fanned the tiniest flicker of hope that maybe life wouldn't always be so...monotonous. So grey, so dull. That maybe if grown adults could kick back and laugh easily sometimes and still be respected, then maybe I could too. These adults were young at heart and--and happy. So...what if I could be that way, too?
The sadness and resignation that had become the fundamental truths of my personality at last began to give way. It was like a ray of light that found me in a prison cell; coaxing me out into the sun. Getting to feel happy again was like rediscovering colors, or recovering your sense of taste after a long sickness. It was marvelous to laugh again, to really feel like laughing, and to occasionally be made helpless by it.
Music, laughter, and most of all Truth came flooding into me, wrenching open the windows that I had long kept nailed shut, sweeping away the cobwebs in my brain, purging my fears that lay in cluttered piles, washing and scrubbing and rinsing the grime off everything, refurnishing, reorganizing, redecorating everything with cheery new thoughts, and lighting lamps and hanging them up everywhere. Shadows were banished. Like boggarts, my mind's troubles and insecurities fled and dissipated before laughter.
Singing still cleanses my soul to this day. When my heart goes sour, some good music helps to put it back in tune. If I'm lost in a labyrinth of motives and worries, singing songs full of truth shows me the way out.
When I get to sing for people, it's like I get to show them the way out, too. It's a pleasure greater than any fame or stardom the world can offer. That's why I'm a choir nerd. I hate it when choir ends for the summer, and I'm always itching for it to start again in August.
As the Autumn weather approaches (little by little!) I associate its beauty with the new songs I will learn when choir begins again. I gladly hammer out the difficult passages on the piano until they feel natural to me. I get to taste Christmas as we rehearse the music for our December concert. Fall and Christmas are deeply linked in my mind. I can't really experience one without the other.
A few weeks ago I was looking for a Christmas anthem for my family to perform this Christmas Eve. I eagerly opened the first file drawer, and thrilled to my fingertips as I saw all the old sheet music. To me it felt like browsing through tomes of ancient magical lore. (Think Gandalf elbow-deep in scrolls and parchments in the library of Gondor here!) Old anthems were like dear friends, hailing me with scores of happy memories. I went on browsing gleefully through every drawer, hunting a particular song. I do believe I would have made a delightful study for a manga-artist in that moment: standing on my tiptoes to peer into file drawers nearly as tall as me, my nose close to the label tabs, my hands busy and rummaging, my hair falling around my delighted face.
Long rehearsals are my glory. It doesn't matter how long a rehearsal is scheduled, you cannot daunt me with it. I saw a meme of a nerdy-looking kid with glasses that said, "Has a three-hour rehearsal---thinks it will be fun," and I just laughed. Story of my life. I do find it fun. Fun, refreshing, invigorating, even outright energizing.
In the New Heavens and the New Earth, I'll be able to sing as much as I could desire. We're children of a singing God, after all. He sings, so we should too.
But until then, this is my prayer:
"I love you, Lord
And I lift my voice to worship You.
Oh my soul, rejoice!
Take joy, my King in what you hear!
May it be a sweet, sweet sound in your ear!"
~Cadenza
