Searching...Seeking..Finding

So, I just try to go to bed. I dose off and then wake and try again. I know it's early! I'm getting old ya know! As I drift off, I get the sense that the Spirit is trying to tell me something.

I'll be honest, I'm not good at hearing His voice. Well maybe I am. Ever since I got here to Wisconsin it's like He just won't let me go. It's this (for lack of better words) nagging and tugging of my soul strings.

Does anyone know what I mean? Let me try asking this...Is there anyone sensing God trying to lead you in what you think is a new direction, but you are so aware that if you go another direction that your entire family will stone you?

WHEW! There I said it! Yes, I know, I need help. Who am I talking to? Who KNOWS?!? The voices in my head perhaps. HAHAHAHA!

No...

This is one of those blogs, that I know I need to do, but my mind is saying that everyone will respond with "You Dope!" Oh well... If you wish to stop reading, it's really okay. No honestly, I just need to sort my thoughts and for some reason this is the best way to do it.

I wish I had a place to disappear up here. The church back in Indiana was the place I could go.

"Seek me while I may be found." "I will be found by you," declares the Lord, "when you seek with me with all your heart."

Wow! That just like came into my being. So...what does that mean to you?

I feel like all I need to do is have a time of music fasting. Where all I do is just sing songs to Him until I burst.

I know...my grammar is atrocious.

"Be still and know..." SIDENOTE: Dr. Jeff Bell (is that right?) directing the orchestra while they play "Finlandia". I know there are a couple of you reading this that remember that. Don't be shy. I can't tell you how much I miss Dr. Bell. He felt the calling of God to go to Olivet Nazarene. One of the songs I sang with him as I was taking vocal instruction from him was "Try to Remember" from the "Fantasticks". Try to remember the kind of September....

Oh that September in 1995. Have I ever told you, how much I love music? How much it has always been a part of my life? I don't believe I've ever forgotten a song that I've sung.

Tell the world the message......
Take it everywhere....

Ralph Manuel's "Alleluia"
Zadok the Priest
Cape Breton Lullaby

It was weird. The other night I had a dream. I had entered my old choral teacher's room and she stopped working with the kids there and told me that I needed to take the lead. I questioned her...she gave me more encouragement, so I began. We started to work on a piece when I felt the need to stop and start working on proper breathing. I gave them a technique to work on with their neighbor and then I approached my teacher. I asked her if I did okay. She told me that I did fine. She always believed in me.

This was the same teacher that I composed a song for when I heard she was retiring. Who I then arranged the song for and then got the most awesome opportunity to direct a 200 member current and alumni choir to sing it to her at her last concert.

The same song she requested only a few years later at her funeral.

I am blessed. I am honored, humbled and so undeserving.

I wasn't thinking of her that night I had the dream. I don't know why I dreamed it. But it was so clear, so vivid.

I've had so many, many influential music teachers and professors in my life.

Thank you. You allowed God to use you. I have been forever touched.

No particular order:
Mr. VanBrocklin
Ms. Greenya (sp?)
Ms. Beadle
Mrs. Brewer
Mrs. Butters
Mr. MacLean
Ms. Bird
Mr. Russ Larimer
Dr. Eph Ely
Charlotte...man, can't remember her last name...she was from Denver, Colorado..I think...
Dr. Bell
Prof Guy
Dr. John Maher
Dr. Lessly
Dr. Kindley
Mrs. Torrey
Mrs. Mawby
Mr. Robert Martin
Dr. Brown
Dr. Hilfiger

Man...I know I'm missing so many more...

Music is who I am. Every moment of my life I have either wrote a song or sung a song that has marked it.

Why am I thirty years old and feel like I'm still needing to seek, to find, to search, to discover?

Thanks for listening to me. It's okay if you moved on after the first sentence. :) For those...umm...to that one who hung in there with me. Thanks for taking the time.

Talk to you soon, my friends.