Grass Roots Worship- part 3

A significant upheaval within our church led to my hubby and I stepping into the leadership role of the worship band in 2014.

We had not asked for the position. I personally did not want to do it. But, as usual, the Lord set about making things work for my good that I wished He had done differently.

Like all church crises, the echoes and affects were far reaching in our lives, and I clawed through a season of debilitating anxiety. Every song I sang became an exercise in walking out what I had been learning so sweetly and kindly from the Lord over the prior years.

Worship isn't about the season I am in. It's about the God I am worshiping.

Slowly, slowly, I settled into a rhythm again. The anxiety retreated, and the Lord was so gracious in blessing us with a team of worshipers. Building a camaraderie of all pressing toward His presence, more today than yesterday, and more still tomorrow, bonded us. 

And then I started to have some pain in my throat.

Strep, laryngitis, and a nasty cold later, I assumed it was just a winter sickness.

But the pain persisted.

I started struggling to make it through songs I was leading. I felt the tension in my vocal cords. I can remember coming down off the stage after worship and literally holding my neck with my hand, trying to find a way to lessen the tense pain I felt in the muscles.

Finally, not because I wanted to but because I felt like I had become a liability to the team, I went to the ENT. I will spare you the details of a scope into my nostril and then down into my windpipe. I will only mention briefly that I was asked to SING with that camera in my nose and throat, taking pictures of my vocal cords.

It was so not a blessing.

A couple painful procedures later, I was diagnosed with some developing nodules, and muscular tension dysphonia. Basically, my vocal muscles were tired and not working properly, and it would take major retraining to fix them.

So I started vocal therapy. And I did total vocal rest (which my husband and kids thought would be awesome in theory, but was actually really annoying for everyone when I could not answer their 10 million daily questions.) 

I kept pushing through, singing, and I kept hurting, and after months of vocal therapy...they told me that all they could do had been done. I would either get better, or I wouldn't, and I would need to decide at what point to give up singing in order to maintain decent vocal function.

I passed off lead parts and harmony parts to my wonderful team. I sang, but with much less gusto. Gusto hurt, and besides, if I tried and my voice totally failed mid-song...that would be so embarrassing. 

One morning in my quiet time, I remember telling the Lord, "I don't need to sing into a microphone to worship You. I will step out. I'm dragging everyone down anyway."

I felt settled. I made plans to talk it over with my hubby after the weekend.

That Sunday morning a song had been slotted, by said hubby, for me to lead. I had been saying no to most songs he had assigned me, because it hurt too much, or because I was concerned about totally ruining worship for everyone by opening my mouth and having a dying cow sound come out. 

I looked at the song, and then shrugged internally. One last time, I thought. I can worship my Lord through the pain one more time.

"Who am I that the Highest King would welcome me?"

The first line came from my lips, and in a flash I saw my whole life, all my ugliness and struggle and striving and failure...and still He welcomed me, invited me, to come and worship Him. I smiled. What a glorious way to end all the years of singing.

The song continued and I felt the pain worsen. I could feel the muscles in my throat constricting and it grew harder and harder to push sound out. But I was determined to finish.

"Who the Son sets free, is free indeed. I'm a child of God, yes I am."

By the time I reached the bridge, I knew without a doubt that my voice would fail before the song was over. There was nothing left. I had been dealing with the struggle long enough to know. 

"I am chosen, not forsaken, I am who You say I am."

You are for me, not against me, I am who You say I am."

Something happened in that moment. I opened my mouth, knowing no sound would come out, feeling in my physical throat that the muscles had stopped responding to my strain. 

And yet, the words flowed. Even better, they sounded like they were in tune.

I laughed. I inhaled. I opened my mouth again.

I knew I was in the midst of a miracle. I knew it. I wasn't singing anymore. My voice had ceased to work. 

The Holy Spirit was testifying of the Father and the Son, and He was breathing it out of my mouth, through my janky, tired, swollen vocal cords.

What was true in the spirit became true in the physical. I finished that song knowing that I hadn't really been singing. Instead, I had allowed the breath in my lungs to be HIS, and He had given me a miraculous encounter with Him that I would never stop being amazed by.

That was several years ago.

Every week, I wonder if this will be the week that the Lord releases me. Many weeks I arrive at rehearsal knowing my voice will hurt. 

But the Lord gently reminds me of the truth.

His breath in my lungs.

His face as my focus.

Abandoned.

Testifying.

Because He is God.

And I will bring my sacrifice to Him.

It has become such a blessing, this physical reminder. If I lose focus on Him, on the WHY, on the spirit and truth and even-in-the-valley worship mindset...I can feel the pain again.

When I am walking in step with how He has called me to live, to worship, to minister...I don't feel the pain at all. The notes flow from my throat with ease.

Working for my good, that's what He is doing. Every time I worship Him, He works good in my heart. He expands His goodness toward me.

The other vocalists know that sometimes I will ask them to take a part I usually sing. "My voice is sad," I will say. And then...then I will remember...and I'll go sit down on a corner of the stage and refocus. Not because I want to be able to be the one singing. 

But because this has become the way the Lord reminds me. In my heart, I am reminded of the little girl, and the cows, and the freedom of spirit that IS MORE POWERFUL than the failing of the physical body.

And He is faithful. Always faithful.

Who knows how long I will have this miracle. I don't even care at this point.

I'll never be anything besides a small town, grass roots girl, an average singer by the world's standards. 

But...

He is worthy. And that is why I worship Him.

Grass Roots Worship- part 2

 My sister, a 26-year-old missionary, died unexpectedly in Malaysia in 2010.

When all the hard things you've walked through before come to a screeching halt in the face of the pain in front of you, it causes a crisis of identity, of faith. At least it did for me.

Shattered into a million pieces, but still required to function on a daily basis, I did what everyone does. I went through the motions. I kept putting one foot in front of the other.

One day, driving somewhere, worship music playing, I remember hearing a song with the words from Romans 8:28. "You make all things work together for my good..."

I reached and turned down the sound. I even said aloud, "But why this? Why does it have to be like THIS? How is this for my good?"

For nearly 2 years, whenever that song played (and it was popular at the time so I heard it a lot) I couldn't bring myself to sing the words.

They stuck in my throat. I rejected them. Because I didn't WANT them to be true. And somehow in my mind if I didn't sing them, if I didn't agree with them out of my mouth...I was successfully letting God know exactly how I felt about what He had chosen to work for my good.

For even longer than that, I struggled with stories about healing, and singing worship songs that praised God for being a miracle worker, a healer, sovereign.

I knew all fo that was true. I believed it.

But also, also my sister died, while we prayed for her healing. He hadn't healed her. We had not seen a miracle. His sovereignty at work felt like being slashed through the heart. That's honestly how it felt to me. I was so confused and shaken.

And somehow I simply couldn't bring myself to really MEAN the words that proclaimed what I knew to be true. It felt false to sing them. And so, I forced them out when I HAD to, but mostly avoided them at all cost.

A faith crisis finds us all, at one point or another, and while everyone has different circumstances that lead them there...God is always faithful to us in them.

My kids had a terrifying experience in the snow a few years after Joy's death, and as I sat with them, snuggled in my bed while near-hypothermia lingered, I remember thanking God for protecting them, for sparing them, for miraculously intervening and keeping them from drowning in the sub-freezing water they had fallen into.

And hope sparked back to life.

The Holy Spirit gently reminded me that my God still did miracles, had never stopped, and maybe my spiritual eyes needed some adjustments.

I sat kissing the cheeks and hands and blonde heads of my kids, crying and saying "thank you" over and over for the warmth returning to their bodies, and I saw the Lord's faithfulness, as if for the first time.

Songs began to resonate deeply again. I remembered...I remembered that even in the valley shadowed by death, He was with me. I had not died of a broken heart. And that was a miracle. Joy had not been healed the way I asked for, but she was healed and whole in heaven. And that was a miracle, even if it wasn't the one I wanted. 

My grief journey lit a newness inside me, a longing to understand how to worship in spirit and truth, even when it felt like the words coming out of my mouth were in direct contrast to the feelings inside me.

Because if God was still true even when it felt like nothing was, I should be able to worship Him, even in the valleys. Maybe especially in the valleys.

The little girl who sang fearlessly and shamelessly to cows, because she had only known the beauty and hope of God...she was still in there. And she longed for a way to throw back her head and see His goodness again.

And I wondered if maybe, maybe my worship became MORE true, more powerful, if I could find my way to praise Him with abandon IN SPITE of the fact that there had been valleys. Was there power in worship that was believed and clung to, even when the feeling of it was missing? There had to be something to the verses that said to offer a sacrifice of praise. (Hebrews 13:15, Psalm 116:17) Sacrifices were painful. They cost something. But they were still worship. 

The question I asked myself became: Do I worship God because it feels true, or because He is worthy of worship?

Such a healing season, the next few years. Discovering, as if for the first time, that He Himself was the prize to be sought, the reason to open my mouth, the breath in my lungs. 

He is worthy of worship because He is God, even if nothing good ever comes to me from His hand. I found new revelation in Job's words: "Though He slay me, yet I will trust Him." (Job 13:15) 

Such a gift, the fire, the pain, the upheaval. Such a miracle, the learning to cast myself on His sovereignty because His hands, with all the pain that may come, were hands that loved me.

He had worked together for my good, even when I rejected that truth.

And still, still there was more to come.

Grass Roots Worship- part 1

 I've been thinking lately about the term "grass roots" and what it means. It's usually used with regard to a political campaign that is started in obscurity and is run in a way contrary to the mainstream norm. Low budget. Unconventional. Small potatoes. Barely a splash in a big pond of culture-shaping.

I like the concept. I like the term. 

I am stealing it and applying it to my life.

Most of the time I feel like everything about who I am as a person, and what I do on a daily basis, can fall under this anti-norm, opposite-of-culturally-acceptable, wildly-polarizing, unlikely-to-be-relevant umbrella. I'm a grass roots girl all the way. Always have been.

And I'm glad. I like my quiet life. I do not mind that I am small potatoes.

So when the Holy Spirit first prompted me toward this blog I am composing, I did what all obedient believers should do: I wrote a few notes down as the Spirit led.

But then, then I just left the notes sitting there. Doing nothing. Collecting dust.

Why?

Because, I'm a small town girl. I'm grass roots. I can be found wearing sweatpants and slippers on most days. Nobody, and I do mean nobody, needs to hear what I have to share on...well, most things, honestly. 

But I have been informed, via a reprimand from the Lord, that I do not share what He puts inside me to share for the sake of who may (or more likely will not) hear/read it...I write because He tells me to, and I am His child, therefore my obedience is part of the deal.

"Because I said so," carries a bit more weight when the Lord says it to me than when I say it to my kids.

And so I'm going to talk about worship for a bit. Not because I am an expert on the subject. FAR from it. Not because many, many more influential people haven't spoken and written on the topic. They have. I've heard and read much of what is out there.

No. I'm going to write because the Lord has asked me to. And I say yes, even though I first spent months saying 'no' in my actions. 

My first audience as a singer was a field full of cows. I remember it with perfect clarity. I don't remember whose house we were at, or why I was alone outside, or how old I was. My mom informs me I was around 6 years of age. I DO recall that I was sitting on top of something, looking out over the field of cows, and for some reason I started singing. And as I sang whatever song I was singing (okay so I don't remember it with PERFECT clarity. More like partial clarity) the cows, one by one, began to look my way.

Talk about grass roots. It doesn't get any more obscure than singing for cows. 

My parents both sing, and my mom plays a very grass roots instrument, otherwise known as an autoharp, and so my next audience was our church, singing with my parents, when I was 7 or 8 years old. My parents had taught me one of the songs they liked to sing together, and how to stay on the melody while they sang harmony, and while I don't remember what song we sang then either, I do remember feeling very special that they had invited me to sing with them.

I come from a very large extended family, and there are a lot of singers and musicians among us. Our family circle sing-alongs are some of my best childhood memories. For all of my growing up years, any get-together always had at least one time of singing. And us cousins would always split up who would sing what harmonies, and we would belt out the words of worship to God, carefree and confident. 

Growing up has a way of tempering our dreams though, doesn't it? Getting out into the world a little bit and realizing that you are average at best...it changes your goals and plans. Coming to the startling understanding that lots and lots of people are way better than you at what you thought you were so good at...well, it makes you reevaluate, reassess, adjust expectations.

I met and married a piano playing, singing man. My dreams of being anything big and special and important shifted to much nearer, achievable dreams of singing with him, helping as backup for our church worship team. And then we had kids, and my worship dreams morphed again. I didn't have time to be on the worship team very often, and so they became my audience. I would sing to them, and teach them to sing, and raise my hands as we sang, and tell them to "praise the Lord" with me, and they would clap and lift their hands and sing the wrong words to my childhood sing-along-songs, and it was magical to watch their eyes sparkle with joy. Children worship before they really understand, or perhaps BECAUSE they really understand. And there was a purity in their worship that struck me, and set me back into a mode of pondering.

Why don't they care what they sound like, or how they look, or who is around? How can they just sing, and throw back their heads, and throw out their arms, and abandon themselves? 

The little girl singing to the cows did the same thing.

What did she know that I had forgotten in all my growing up and learning to live small and accept my regular-ness?

For 10 years I sang occasional backup for church. We moved a few times for my hubby's job, and always, at whatever church we ended up at, it would eventually become known that he and I sang, and he played piano, and we would be invited to help out. In fact, now that I think about it, we have never attended a church where we were not involved, eventually, in the worship team ministry. 

Still, my dearest times of worship were alone, or with my kids. I struggled mightily with depression for a season. Our marriage struggled mightily for a season. I would sing under my breath in those times, during those years. Songs that were the Word set to music would rise up from my childhood memories and come pouring out of my mouth. When I didn't have the will to sing for myself, I would listen to music, and let it wash over me, and strengthen me.

And as it always does, time marches on, and the Lord heals wounds and struggles, and teaches us new things about Himself in the process. I began to understand the truth about worship; that it isn't about sounding good or even serving a ministry. It's about reminding ourselves of Who is worth all of our attention and adoration. That's the truth that the kids know and we too easily forget as we grow up and take on the distractions of life. We forget to remember ONLY HIM while we worship.We forget that He heals us when we aren't even looking at what hurts. When we look only at Him...His very presence heals. 

I had figured it out, I thought. I now knew how to worship. Praise the Lord for the learning. My small life now made sense. I was at peace with the process, because I had arrived at the place of understanding.

And then, because that is the way of it, everything changed again.

To be continued...