A Girl in Music Ministry

Not my problem.  It’s not my problem anymore. How does it feel to wash your hands of something? To lay it down, to walk away from it, to turn your back on it?  If it’s something that has plagued you, hurt you, or weighed you down, it feels quite good.  Good riddance.  Not my responsibility.  Not my problem. Have you ever said that to your sin? I said it a couple of days ago.  I said it because those three words flashed into my mind and I claimed them.  And I kept saying them as I thought of what it meant, and the more I said it, the more power those words seemed to have.  I deal with shame.  Lots of Christians do because in our inmost being we want to please our Savior, but our battle with the flesh feels overwhelming.  We want to live up to the title “Child of God,” but we are convinced that a true child could never struggle the way we do. Most days, I don’t feel as much ...

I had a very hard week last week.  It all began with one negative thought, and before I knew it, I had spiraled downward toward the darkness. When you are in the darkness, you know it.  And you know that it’s not where you want to be. You know that light is possible and that where you are is based on lies and tainted emotions.  You know that it is not God’s place for you and that all you are feeling is the result of a skewed perspective.  You know in your brain, but you cannot transfer that knowledge to your soul.  Not while in the midst of the darkness. I cried out to God, “Why?  Why again?  Why am I right back down in the pit where I swore I would never go again?  I thought we were done with this!  I thought life was new for me!”  And yet I sat, the dark still holding on, manifesting itself in obsessive thoughts, anxiety, and hopelessness.  Why, indeed. I fou...

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 apprehensiv...

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-cont...

            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....