Thursday, June 26, 2025

Song of My Heart

It's nice to feel like I have a place to worship again. It still messes with my head a bit that this is a place that I wouldn't have even considered if God hadn't ordained circumstances to lead me there. I still wonder sometimes if this is home for another long haul, or if it's just for a season, but I'm excited about the opportunities...today and tomorrow. 

I'm excited about the ways that it's shaping my faith and giving me back my love for the Lord. I'm excited about the ways that it's reminding me of how much He loves me. I'm excited about the opportunities that this church has for service - I will definitely find something that is close to my heart and exactly what God designed me for. 

But I'm most excited, perhaps, that the music is back. 

My former church, when I entered it, was a singing church. A capella. The sounds of our voices. I spent a lot of time in my formative years singing, and that shaped my faith and my day-to-day living in a dramatic way. For years, it felt like there was always a song on my heart. Always some lyric on the tip of my tongue. Something that would pop up without me even knowing it and just fill me from the inside out. 

I love music. 

Then, of course, we went instrumental, but I became part of the worship team, so those songs were running through my head a lot of the time, as well. Key changes, chord changes, harmonies..it was all there. 

When I separated from my former church, the music stayed around for awhile. I woke up with a song in my head, carried it in my heart, sang in the shower, hummed throughout the day. 

As time went on, the number of songs I could draw on started to dwindle. It came to where there were just a couple, two or three maybe, that would come readily to mind. Mostly stuff I was hearing on my Christian radio station, which was keeping me connected to musical worship as best as I could in my wilderness season. 

And then it came that I started waking up to silence. No more music. No more songs in my heart. I started really having to work to remember anything, and sometimes, even that was failing me. Something profound was happening in my heart without the music, and it's honestly the thing that made me want to be back in church. More than anything else, I wanted the music in my life back. 

The worship at my new church is very different from the worship at my former church. I don't know all of the songs. Yet. I hesitate sometimes to sing along. Are we a singing church? Not in the way that the church I came of age in was, but there's still a place to lift our voices. Again, I guess, it goes back to what I said yesterday - I'm getting the chance to choose how I engage. 

I've only been to this church three times. Just three. But it only took one. After that Easter Sunday, the music came back. I started waking up with a song in my heart again. With a sway in my step. With a rhythm in my soul. 

And oh, how I have missed that.  

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