Into the Unknown

      The high note was piercing through the rafters into the unknown. The smooth voice was male which surprised me, because the song was normally sung by a woman. Instead of a stringed instrumental the electric guitar ripped through a solo rift. The Show tune cherished by every girl under the age of ten was instantly transformed into an eighties want to be epic ballad. I pictured the silver voiced singer wearing tight spandex pants and sporting a long permed mane.

    The song moved me literally all over the room. Air guitaring and trying my best to sing a long I danced. My kids laughed at the sight of their middle aged mom transported back to 1987. The year I was 10 and pretty boy bands were all the rage. A time when MTV was big but also banned from my house, so I went to my neighbors house to watch it.

Music somehow has this affect on us.

     Come on, I know you do it to. You could be minding your own business just washing the dishes when a song comes on the radio that just makes you sing out. Looking to make sure no one is around you have even went for it, that high falsetto note, so high it makes dogs cry.

     Music has a way of transporting us to time periods in our lives. In just a few bars of a song we find ourselves remembering the seventh grade dance, what we wore, and how we felt. We remember the day we unwrapped our first CD player.

     Many studies have proven that classical music helps the human brain function at a deeper level. There are also studies that rock music kills plants....wait, is that why I can't keep them alive?

    I would venture to say that music is the background of our lives. Have you stopped to notice it? Like wallpaper it is hung up all around our daily existence. Think of the elevator, or Walmart at Christmas. It is supposed to pacify us when we are put on hold with the insurance company. We all gather around our TV's to watch it at the Super Bowl Halftime show.

    I can almost see Julie Andrews on the grassy hilltop singing, "The hills are alive with the sound of music."

   This is how my heart comes alive. As I sing to God, my source of life. The melody can be rocky or a classic hymn of praise but when the message is gratefulness my heart feels whole. My soul feels happy.

   I have sung solo, or in a group. I have led choirs, and I have sung through sign language. I have written songs, and played them on piano, bass, and acoustic guitar. I have whispered them to sleepy babies. I have sung them to foreign people in a language I did not know.

   For me, singing about my God is sharing Hope. Do we know that we are loved by God? For most of us, even if we did know it, life has a way of convincing us otherwise. But I believe He does love us whether we are rockers or crooners. Whether our world is painted with baby Shark do-do-do-do's or Axle Rose's na na na na na's.

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life." John 3:16.

     So whoever you are, I want you to know that you are loved. By the way, I'm singing that right now in my PJ's, with my frumpy just woke up hair, and my best Pat Benatar voice.