Full, Expanded Circle

I’m looking out over the Winston Salem skyline as I write these words tonight. The sun is setting in the distance with beautiful oranges and purples and reds while the moon is shining bright just over my head. To my right, atop one of the tallest buildings in town, the American flag stands tall, one last reminder to say thank you to a veteran today.

I’ve attended fifteen hours of workshops and seminars over the past two days. The North Carolina Music Educator’s Professional Development has filled my Veteran's Day weekend, yet I’ve observed and learned a lot, and I’m glad for the opportunity to reconnect with old friends and add tools to my music teaching tool belt. My existing tools are still being dusted off after five years of disuse, so it’s nice to have some new ones.

Six years ago, I came to this conference immediately after leading worship with my now defunct band. I stayed until Tuesday and returned to real life to attend whatever class I was taking at the time. During that last conference, my body was here but my mind was not. In fact, I sat in the sessions reading books for divinity school. At that time, I was in the process of deciding whether to continue teaching or whether to pursue full-time ministry, and I had subconsciously begun a spiral downward that would land me in a very dark place in coming months.

After class that Tuesday night, I called a friend whom I often stopped by to visit and was greeted with the phrase, “We don’t know where Kay is.” Within an hour, we were standing at Kay’s house watching rescue workers roll away her body. After getting my band settled that Sunday, Kay, my friend, mentor, and music minister at the church, sick with a stomach virus, had gone home to fight the virus only to have the force of her sickness cause her heart to stop. The next few days were met with grieving, cleaning, planning, preparing for a funeral, and trying to wrap my mind around the fact that my band members and I were the last people to see Kay alive. I think I may have taken off that Wednesday from work.

As I watch darkness settle in tonight, I can’t help but think of the darkness that consumed me for so long after Kay died. I continued with life. I did everything I could not to let it interfere with my work; however, it was a reality I couldn’t shake. Yet just as I am seeing stars, planets, and man-made lights come into view before my eyes tonight, I know that I was surrounded by God’s presence and the presence of people who were light to me when I couldn’t find light within myself.

I stood in line at Starbucks this morning and thought to myself, “This little corner coffee shop is going to make more money in one day than I will make in an entire month.” I bought my food last night and today and thought to myself, “I’m not going to be reimbursed for this even though I’m working.” I listened to a colleague share about the challenges of a forced week of vocal rest. I thought, “She has devoted so much of herself to her job for so long that she has literally damaged her voice.”

For the past two days, during and between conference sessions, I have experienced so many different thoughts and emotions that it’s hard to put them on this page. Yet the overwhelming feelings that surround me right now are feelings of gratefulness and peace.

This is the first year I’ve focused on Veteran’s Day at school. I’m sad to admit that Veteran’s Day is a holiday that I have often overlooked. But not this year. This year I’m very mindful of the role that the men and women of our military play toward keeping our country safe and free and toward helping give dignity to many persons around the world. I’m very mindful of the sacrifices they make when leaving their families and loved ones to answer the call of duty. Teaching at a school where your students, parents, and colleagues are either in or married to someone in the military will open your eyes and shake your core as military planes fly overhead and practice bombs are dropped in the distance. So today I am humbly grateful to people beyond myself…but I am also grateful that life has brought me full-circle while allowing that circle to expand along the way.

Am I back in a profession to which I didn’t expect to return? Yes. Am I making tens of thousands of dollars less than I was? Yes. Do I know all of the latest tricks of the trade? No. Am I the best music teacher in the world? Absolutely not. Am I sad as I remember losing Kay? Yes. Do I curse the darkness that afterwards ensued? No. Could I have stopped it? I don’t think so. Do I regret going to South Carolina? No. Do I know that walking away from teaching for five years was exactly what I needed to do? Yes. Do I know that God has been with me every step of the way? Absolutely. And do I know that where I am right now is exactly where I need to be? Yes. Yes. Absolutely yes.

And so, for now, I am at peace.

Sun completely set. Moon shining even brighter. Flag still standing tall. Knowing that darkness must come for the night…but that joy will come in the morning…and then my students will challenge it :-)…yet everything will be okay.

Well Done, My Child

The first time I remember appreciating silence was the summer after my freshman year of college. I worked as a camp counselor that summer and filled my weeks with the sounds of 12 elementary-aged girls in my cabin and hundreds of other girls around the camp. While I enjoyed my work as camp counselor (it actually took root and transformed my life), I also distinctly remember walking back to my cabin in the hours after campers left and taking in the beautifully sweet sound of silence. It was outdoor silence, so it was punctuated with birds singing, leaves rusting, and squirrels running. But it was beautiful. And in its echoes, I could hear the sounds of little girls laughing and praising God, and that made the silence even more beautiful.

Still, I struggled with silence. It made me uncomfortable. 15 seconds of silence felt like an eternity. I couldn’t understand how my parents could ride in silence for an hour or more at a time. I assumed it meant they were mad. It didn’t. It just meant that they were comfortable in their silence.

The other day, I heard someone say: “Only speak if your words can add to the silence.”

I also read the chapter on solitude in Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline. Foster highlighted the fact that too often we fill time with anxious words of explanation. We want people to like us. We want to be understood. We don’t want anyone to upset. We don’t want to be thought ignorant. So we talk. And we try hard to win the affection and accolades of those around us when sometimes less is more—when sometimes our yes really does need to be yes and our no just needs to be no—when sometimes we need to release control of what others think of us and allow our spirits and intentions to speak for themselves.

This is something that I am learning.

This is something that is growing my faith.

When we slow down and let life catch up with us, we are often bombarded by thoughts, words, deeds, actions, guilts, desires, hopes, dreams, and everything in between. When we open ourselves to silence, we are often overwhelmed by the noise that fills our heads. It’s in the those moments that we are tempted to return to outer noise—music, white noise, television, conversation, constant activity—because it feels normal and numbs our soul.

But if we just wait? What if we push through those initial moments of inner chaos and let the silence surround us? What if we allow our thoughts to pass through our minds with grace rather than giving them permission to play like a broken record? What if we breathe in “Jesus Christ, Prince of Peace” and breathe out “Come sit with me now,” and let our breath hold us on a sacred pillow of silence?

Our souls find rest.

God calls God’s people to be different. God calls us to be set-apart. Counter-cultural. Light in darkness and salt where there is no flavor. Maybe what this means isn’t so much that we are to take a stand on issues of morality and create for ourselves a narrow-minded, hateful reputation. Maybe what this means is that we are to be a people of silence. A people who, at our cores, are at peace with God and ourselves and do not need the constant motion and noise of this world to fill the gaping hole that is Needy Beast.

I’m on a journey toward embracing silence, toward allowing my soul to find rest.

I pray that you will join me and that together we will hear echoes of God laughing and saying, “Well done, my child. Well done.”

I Love The Mountains

If you were inside my head right now, then you’d be singing, “I love the mountains, I love the rolling hills, I love the flowers, I love the daffodils, I love the fireflies when all the lights are low…”

I do love the mountains.

In fact, I love the mountains so much that I chose to forgo the lake and swimming pool with the kids today so that I could stay at the cabin and watch the clouds cast shadows onto and away from the mountains.

[I’m sure there’s something to be learned from the experience, but, believe it or not, I’ve chosen just to let the experience be what it was—a beautifully peaceful experience.]

I drifted in and out of sleep just as the shadows drifted over the land and I breathed deeply and smiled often and for one brief moment I felt no stress…(even though I did miss the boys and girl and battle with a little bit guilt over not being with them).

Tomorrow, we’ll go for a boat ride and then probably go swimming and then after that I’m not sure what we’ll do.

But it really doesn’t matter.

All that matters is I’m here with my family and I’m in the mountains and I can breathe a little easier and I am content—for now.