A Girl in Music Ministry

It has been almost a year since I sat at the keyboard at Fellowship Baptist Church in Marble Falls, TX.  Last year at about this time, I informed the congregation that I would be taking an interim Music Ministry job at First Baptist Church Eastland. Fellowship, the church who had been my family for over eight years, would now be in my past.  I was excited about the future, but I had no idea how FBC Eastland would compare with FBC Marble Falls. Walking into a brand new career was exciting.  I knew Eastland was where God had led my family. But there are always anxieties with change.  Though I had been involved in music ministry in one way or another for a long time, I had never been a Music Minster before.  New job, new town, new church, new people.   I don’t mind new.  While change is not always easy for me, it also feels like a fresh start, which I like.  I wasn’t afraid, a bit apprehensive, but not particularly nervous.   I do remember thinking, “It’ll be nice when I’ve m

I want to be someone who never thinks about herself, who doesn’t obsess over what I did or didn’t eat that day, who lets it go when I make a “mistake” with food.  I am convicted to live apart from the world on this issue.  There are hundreds of diet plans, exercise regimens, tips and recipes and rules, “good” food and “bad” food and clean food and superfood, pills and shakes and surgeries, self-help books, websites, Facebook posts, articles, magazines, blogs, and a neighbor’s two cents about how to lose weight, burn fat, balance your macros, stave off your cravings, change your thinking, your waistline, your metabolism, your habits, burn more calories, shape your thighs, hips, and buns, to make you feel like you are in control and on the path to a better you. None of these are “bad.” But for me, none are good either. All of them, for me, tend to control ME, and I rarely am able to stick to any of them.  Oh, I’ve demonstrated amazing self-control in my life.  For six months I stuck

            I remember the day I realized I did not belong in teaching anymore, that it was time to pursue my true passion – music ministry.  I was driving home from work, talking to my sister on the phone (hands-free, of course), and I made the statement, “You know, what I really want to do is…”   I had always known music ministry was my calling, but in many ways I was already doing it – through playing the piano at my church, leading worship for various ladies’ retreats, and teaching children music at my elementary school job.  But this “revelation” of sorts was different; I needed to move away from education and pursue ministry full-time.             The amazing thing is, my husband was also feeling called to leave his current high school teaching job at Dripping Springs in pursuit of a different path – perhaps still in education, but somewhere different.  We had been living in our house in Briarcliff for thirteen years, content with our jobs, in love with our Marble Falls chur