I’ve heard it a thousand times over the past year and a half.
“You don’t want to go to music school! You’ll end up living in a box under a bridge!”
“My friend’s kids went to music school. They’re all living with their parents again.”
“My brother’s at music school, and the stuff he’s playing is so hard! Why do you want to go? He practices four hours a day.”
At first I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. There are a lot of things I like as hobbies — writing, learning, reading, childcare, decorating, sewing, cooking. . . but there was one thing that my mom pointed out which I liked more than anything else.
Music.
It’s hard to explain.
99% of the time, if I am alone, there is music either turned on the radio or coming out of my mouth. If I’m not alone, it’s running through my head. Constantly. I’m constantly thinking about songs, analyzing them, playing them on the piano, memorizing the lyrics, writing up new lyrics, or learning tricky passages on the piano.
Music is as dear to me as the breath of life. It’s as dear to the Gospel to me — and much of what I know of the Gospel, I found in song.
Still, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go to music school and do something music-related for the foreseeable future — and if I did, what? Plus there were other things to consider — what if I don’t get in? What if I can’t meet the requirements as far as musical-ness (that’s a word now) goes? What if I’m not talented enough? What if I get tired of practicing? And, the big thing I was worried about: What if everyone is right, and I will never be able to provide for myself as a musician?
And if I didn’t go to music school, what else could I possibly do?!
It was at this point that I did the only thing I knew to do: I turned to God. I said, “Should I go to music school after graduation?” His answer, short and sweet? “Yes.”
I fought Him. I’m not sure I knew what I was trying to do — and I still don’t know — but I came up with a thousand other careers I could potentially succeed at. After all, everyone
said that musicians don’t make money. What would I do at music school? I wasn’t comfortable with the prospect of a performance major; teachers and other “experts”
I talked to said that music teachers rarely get jobs, and schools like to hold onto them until they retire; nothing else seemed quite good enough.
It was in a quiet closet, hiding during a game of Sardines, that I heard the voice of God: “Don’t you think I know what’s best for you?” I knew what He was saying: “Trust Me.”
Did I? Nah. I went over and over the situation in my mind for most of the next year. I came up with solutions and ideas and things. Yet, I had testimony after testimony that God was sending me to music school.
Yet . . . I am a stubborn girl.
At some point during the year, I remembered a friend of mine who had graduated a few years before. When she went to community college, her goal was to become a music therapist.
Music therapy . . . .hmmmm . . .
Nah.
But the thought kept coming back to me, so I did some research. There are several kinds of music therapy — it’s used to help those with trauma, preemie babies, terminally ill patients, those with special needs/autism/etc., and people with sensory, cognitive, and/or motor dysfunction, among other things.
“Hey, that’s interesting,” I thought. And then memories started floating back to me… how when I was a kid, I was enthralled with the brain and how it worked. I was that nine-year-old that checked out entire books solely about autism or ADHD or dysgraphia. I was that kid who would go to my parents and say, “Guess what I just read about neurodevelopmental disorders!”
Yeah…I was that kid.
After reading about certain things I could do with music therapy, I knew that if I went to music school, that was what I wanted to do. I did more research into what kinds of things I would study to become a music therapist. I’ll tell it to you straight: I read several places that oftentimes, those who are becoming music therapists will major in music and minor in psychology.
And I do not stand by psychology.
I did more research, I asked questions, and then I put it aside for awhile.
Despite praying about it and receiving a resounding “YES!” from God, I put the thought out of my mind and continued to “seek” for something to do after high school.
It was last January that I learned our choir at Church would be performing a cantata written by one of our own for Easter this year. Since I hadn’t heard this cantata for several years, I found the recordings and played them. The cantata is called The Shepherd’s Voice, and it focuses on Christ as our Shepherd, while also retelling the Easter story in a lovely, vivid way. The last song is called simply, “Feed My Sheep.” It tells the story of Jesus talking to Peter in the last chapter of John, saying, “Do you love Me?” Peter says, “Yes, I love Thee!” Jesus answered, “Feed My lambs.” (John 21:15)
Like I said, I was playing the recordings one particular day. I was just listening to them, taking them all in again and reliving memories from when I was a child. And then I heard the children in the cantata singing sweetly — “Feed My lambs.”
That is what you are to do, came the whisper of the Spirit. Feed My lambs.
How?!
I prayed about this revelation for several months, first wondering if He meant Church-related work, then wondering if He meant I was to be a teacher.
Finally He said it to me one night as I prayed, words so bold I could not deny them:
“‘Feed My sheep’ means to feed My people with the musical ministry you provide through Me. The question is not over whether or not you want to go to music school. The question is over whether you want to give yourself wholly to Me. And unless you do, you cannot be saved.”
Okay, I thought. I’m going to music school.
BUT TO DO WHAT?!
(Because, as stubborn and thick-skulled as I am, I was not going to take on a load of psychology courses without God’s sure direction…)
It was on April 2nd, 2017, that I was sitting in a Church communion service, thinking of something completely different than what God wanted me to do with my life. Yet all at once the Spirit came to me and surrounded me. Finally . . . finally I had my direction.
“As a music therapist, you will be feeding My lambs.”
I saw it then in my mind’s eye, a frame from a video on music therapy I had watched months before. A girl, severely disabled and hardly able to communicate, found joy as she and her music therapist worked together.
The words came again: “Feed My lambs.”
Tears are in my eyes as I write this. The Lord’s sheep, His children, His dearly beloved are not only our own people. They are not necessarily always His Saints, the people who follow His commandments to the T and never fail to come to Church.
They are also the lost, the hurting, the broken, the world’s scarred and martyred people. They are the parents of children whose future is bleak. They are the children themselves, ones who would be helpless if there was no one to care for them.
I’m a senior in high school, sixteen years old, unsure of what direction my life will take in the fall — but I know one thing. Someday, I will be a music therapist, and though the road ahead may be rough, stony, and mountainous, together He and I will walk it — and when we reach our destination, we will feed His lambs together.
