Growing up I drove my brother crazy because I was always singing - especially on road trips.
I did all the usual singing stuff - choir, voice lessons, worship teams.
But beyond performance, singing was just how I expressed my heart. It bubbled from me.
I remember cooking dinner with a girlfriend one weekend during High School. Her parents were out of town, and we were preparing dinner for our boyfriends. It was to be a real meal - pasta, salad, and dessert. While we were cooking and chatting and setting the table, I was singing some silly tune. My girlfriend laughed at me. She said it was the most wonderful thing that she had ever heard in her kitchen. She honestly believed it was the first time anyone had ever been heard singing in her kitchen. I was shocked! I was also sad. Hers was not the happiest of homes. While money was plentiful, laughter was not. I vowed to always live in a home filled with laughter and singing.
And I did for many, many years.
But one day. . . I don't even know which day. . . the music stopped.
I stopped singing. I stopped humming. I stopped listening to the radio. My brain was so full, my body was so stressed, I could not handle ANY additional stimuli. Silence - not laughter or music - was what I craved.
Looking back, I realize just how stressed I had become. But at the time, I truly had no idea. I was too busy getting stuff done, keeping bosses happy, driving my kids from place to place, cleaning the kitchen, folding socks, etc, ect, etc. . . to even notice.
During these last four months of rest and recovery, less stress and more silly, something crazy happened. I began to sing again. Like truly sing, not the forced singing to be polite during worship I had been doing for who knows how long, but REAL singing, the kind that bubbled from my soul. When it happened it totally caught me off guard. It felt familiar. . . and yet totally foreign. It felt like coming home. It felt like I found myself again, even though I had not realized I had been lost.
My lesson in all this is that I need to be paying attention to me. I need to take care of all of me. While I had been caring for my body with healthy food choices and exercise, I had not been caring for my heart. I had been so busy making sure everyone else had all they needed that I forgot to take care of me. What had started as one busy week and then one overloaded summer had morphed into a lifestyle of too much. I had unknowingly lost myself one tiny commitment at a time.
Friends, I know there are seasons in which our own needs must be put on a shelf so that we can serve others to an extent beyond our comfort zone. We were created to serve rather than to be served, and sometimes we are called to serve until it hurts A LOT. Yet, we can also turn our servant-hearted nature into an idol of sorts. We can do and do and do. . . all good things - to an extreme in which we lose ourselves. That is not how God wants us to serve. When we serve as He wills us "the yoke is easy and the burden is light." When I am serving as He calls me to serve my heart is filled with singing. There is joy rather than unrelenting pressure.
From time to time we must slow down enough to do a real heart check. Am I OK? How much am I sleeping? When did I do something fun and relaxing? When is the last time I laughed. . . really laughed? When was the last time I had a face to face conversation with a friend? When is the last time I listened to God - rather than just telling Him what to do during quick bursts of exhausted prayer? (And for me) Do I hum while folding laundry, sing while I vacuum?
I don't know what your signal is - but I have learned that in my life when the music stops so has my joy. If I have no joy, I have lost myself. If I have lost myself, I am most certainly NOT on the path that God wills. On His path there is joy, true joy - not fleeting happiness, but joy and peace unlike anything this world has to offer.
Take a moment to do a heart check often. Start saying no before "the music stops." His path of joy and peace is so, so much better than the path of busyness we are so tempted to follow.
Saying no is scary. Making big crazy lifestyle changes - like quitting one job - is scary.
BUT hearing His music once again is so, so, so, so wonderful.
I am still serving nearly every moment of every day. And although once in a while, I feel overwhelmed, all in all my heart is joyful. I feel like me again - the me I was created to be - and that is a gift my whole family is enjoying!
