Awakening, unpacked (a little)

"What are the next steps we should be taking for your musical life here in Seattle?" he asked. We were in the kitchen; I was cutting his hair, some regular Lenten evening in February.

Silence. An unexpected quaking began in my bones.

"Do you have any ideas for what would be feasible right now?" Gentle, harmless probing. The uninvited quaking began to rumble. I blinked hard.

"Do you want to start to inquire at the Faculty of Mus..."

"WHY ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT THIS RIGHT NOW?"

Orion blinked back at me.

"I. KILLED. MUSIC. TO. MOVE. TO. SEATTLE."

I wept (more than I am used to) for a day and a half.

I was torn open, wide open, and my wound was gushing. I didn't expect it. I did not conjure up the drama. It was very real, and sickening. I was blown over by the storm.

I guess that months, turned into years, of stuffing (parts of) your heart and passion can do that. Turns out I didn't make them go away at all; the stuffing did not erase them. The act of stuffing the dreams did not snuff them. I ignored them for a long time because it was all just too hard. I love my babies and we're renovating a house and I'm still figuring out this new city and I just tried to play Strauss but got interrupted and it's just too hard.

We've had conversations like this before, Orion and I, and have made half-hearted, lip-service attempts towards musical resurrection. They were fruitless conversations.

So I wept and thought. I don't know if I prayed or not; I don't know if I consciously prayed much, anyway. I *did* start talking, talking to people who loved me, to people whom I thought might understand. Usually it was just a snippet at a time, never a complete conversation, but subtly, powerfully, the tide began to change.

Encouragement can look like a lot of things. Sometimes it looks like your mom reminding you that she loves you. Sometimes it looks like a new friend sitting on your couch and listening to your crisis with tender eyes. "The Chinese character for crisis actually combines two characters: danger and opportunity," she says. And sometimes, encouragement looks like the sudden appearance of an old friend, a Jamaican-born, Toronto-based, prophetic tenor kind of friend (you don't have one of those?) who has been wowing the masses at Carnegie Hall and speaks Truth over you like a hurricane.

I've spent a lot of time fearing that I'll never again make music at the level at which I am capable. I've spent a lot of time being invisible to that world, not climbing ladders. I've spent a lot of time fearing that I won't be seen as good enough for anything more than playing a monthly offertory, or the odd wedding, or teaching someone's three-year-old daughter. And the truth is that I would rather not make music at all than be reduced, exclusively, to that.

But the storm came, and it broke down that walls I've been building around my heart. I am daring to hope, and daring to believe that something (bigger than me) is on the move. My gift had to fall to the ground and die, and die it did. And yet, I am now done with all my it's too hard and no one cares. I am taking steps to walk in my gifting, more fully as the person I was made to be. I don't have any fruit to show yet, but I have hope and I'm not letting it go this time.

For a season, it was too hard. I had to sacrifice something I loved for others whom I love. I did not make a wrong choice, but I am re-thinking my identity and calling out subtle lies that have wound their way into my image. I will not flog myself for the season I have been in, for these years of invisibility. I will be kind to myself, and I will walk in hope towards what lies ahead.