A Call From God

Hello Everyone, and welcome back to Sight Unseen. Before I start off with the real content of this post, I wanted to apologize for not having a blog post up yesterday. Yesterday, my younger brother Lucien turned 11 and with all the chaos of setting up for his party, opening presents and eating cake, time just got away from me. Please forgive me for not always staying on track and being a perfect human.

Aside from the fact that yesterday was my brothers birthday, yesterday I also happened to go on a retreat. If you do not know, I go to an All-Girls private school. So, retreats are a pretty big deal.

Throughout my four years of high school, I have been on multiple retreats. Most are through my school, but a couple of are not. However, this retreat was different. It was a music retreat. Unlike most of the retreats I have been on, we prayed to God no just by speaking, but by singing. Something many of you may not know about me is that for a large portion of my life, I sang.

Being able to communicate to God in a way that I loved really brought me even closer than I already am.

Not only did I build my relationship with God, but I also had time to reflect on my past experiences with singing. To give you guys a little back story, I sang from the time I was 3 until I was 15. For any of you who hate math, that is 12 years. For more than a decade, I sung my little heart out. When I entered middle school, things with singing became really serious.

For the longest time, I had sang only for fun. I had been in a small choir here and there, but other than that I sang solely for family and friends. In the 6th grade I joined my schools choir which I assumed to be a run-of-the-mill standard middle choice, but was I in for a treat. In this choir we were divided into sectionals and had to learn how to sight read, sing both alto and soprano and harmonize.

Starting in 7th grade I auditioned for the all-county choir and made it. After making all-county, I joined the children’s choir which in other words is a professional choir experience for children. While balancing two other choirs along with my school choir, I auditioned for the school play. I made it.

I remember I would spend hours after school someday’s going from place to place singing for different choirs and different genres. I vividly remember traveling to West Virginia and Pennsylvania to compete in specific competitions and winning. Yes, you heard that right, a small middle school choir traveling to different states for competitions and winning.

As if this was not enough, I started private lessons in my 8th grade year of middle school. Once a week, every week I went for 1 hour. I was honing my voice for high school. Before my family decided to move a few states over, I was planning to go to part time high school that specialized in the “arts”. If you are confused as to what I mean, I would be going to two high schools. One in the morning that specialized in arts and I would work on sight reading, singing and all things music, and the other would be where I would take my regular classes.

Music was my life. You are probably wondering why the heck I went on this long rant about my past, right? How does this have anything to do with a retreat? Well, like I said above, music WAS my life. In the past, I ate, slept and breathed music. When I moved, I could not bear myself to sing because music had been something I loved when I lived in my previous state. Since I did not love where I am now, I could not bring myself to let something that reminded me of a previous experience back into my life.

Now, I will have lived in my new home for 4 years when summer comes along. In these 4 years I have learned that there are pros and cons to every place and that not one place is “the best”, they just each hold a special place in our hearts.

Going on this retreat really reminded me of all the good times and bad times about music. This retreat brought up experiences I had not thought about in years because it was just too painful. But, for once in my life, I did not shy away from thinking about these experiences. I let Jesus bring these thoughts into my head and I remembered them. I remember the feelings, tastes and smells of these past experiences.

Because of this retreat, I was able to put my past to rest. I did not constantly have to think about how sad I was that I had moved away, I now think about how blessed I was to have had those experiences in my life. Because of my history with song, I was able to develop of personality of resilience confidence and an outgoing spirit.

If you are interested to hear specific stories about my past with singing, please let me know down below in the comments section, because I have some pretty funny ones!

I thought it would be a nice story to post about. I share many things with you guys and writing about this has not been easy, but I know that writing about my experiences will in the long run help those going through similar ones.

Please remember to always bring joy to those who need it and to love one another. Please check out my YouTube channel which will be linked right after this paragraph. When you are there, give my videos a BIG thumbs up, and subscribe to my channel for more videos like these blog post.

https://youtu.be/FZDL-4buZ_U