Have you ever felt you needed to reclaim who you are?

Like life, both the good and the bad, slowly eroded your core over time and something was lost in the tides?

I feel like that often. In fact one of the things that this blog has been for me is an outlet to reclaim the writer and the poet that for years was lost in me.

But honestly? There is another part of me that is still lost.

The musician.

I love to sing, have always loved to sing.

I was that little girl who was always singing little made up songs. I was the teenager always in choirs and typically the lead alto. I loved to harmonize.

Nearly every other Sunday I’ll have someone come up to me and compliment my voice and ask me why I’m not on the worship team.

The compliments don’t make me proud, rather for years its been like rubbing salt in an open wound.

Have you ever had a part of yourself that is just so dear to yourself that just thinking about it can bring you to tears?

I’m being raw today.

Music and worship is that for me.

Yet I was never able to get much in the way of lessons growing up. Money was always an issue, and the only time I did have lessons it was because my brother gave up his karate lessons so we could afford them. Most of the time it felt like this most precious desire in me just went overlooked.

Not that it was overlooked, but a little girl whose heart beats quick just looking at the keys on a piano just doesn’t understand the whole money flow thing.

I’ve always loved instruments, but I’m not that good. I know music well, I have some training in music theory and an excellent ear, but the only instrument I’ve excelled at is the one built into me.

My voice.

And because of that, I was often shut down by the world in my musical dreams.

I know he meant well, but when my music teacher at college kept asking me why I wasn’t going for an English degree instead of a music one, it hurt. He was impressed by the papers I’d turned in.

Words came so easily to me. But music was my heart.

I wonder if his kindly meant words were one of the reasons I finally dropped out.

Words have cadence and rhythm and tone, the music in them is something I love, but even in them it is the music.

The writer in me is a poet whose heart is to unlock not simply words, but songs.

And my heart aches to do so. But so often I feel like I don’t know how.

And the voice comes in, the voice of my own insecurities, fueled by the liar who would wish to defeat everything in me that is real. That voice has whispered to me all my life trying to shut down every word I have to speak, and every song I have to share.

We all have that voice. The voice that wants to kill our dreams and the person we really are.

What makes you feel like you? The truest you? Have you ever noticed that it is those places that we can feel the most defeated in?

Until you don’t even feel like you anymore?

Can we give ourselves permission to dream again? To reach back into the heart of ourselves and find those buds of hope and desire that aches to be free?

My tears want to flow to just think of it.

God made me.

He made me to sing.

He made me to dance in worship.

He made me to weave words and poetry.

And He made me with a soul that loves music.

God doesn’t make mistakes. This is who I am. This is who I should allow myself to be. No matter what stones the world might throw my way.

Who did God make you to be? Have you lost sight of it?

Can you find it again?

Don’t let life and lies rob you of yourself.

Let yourself be.

 

Joy Aletheia Stevens

By the way, it’s my moms birthday today… so…

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM! I LOVE YOU!