Gifts. With the season of gift giving, it is on everyone’s minds. What do our loved ones and friends want? Will it be hard to get? What can we give them that will be more precious than any other gift that has been given to them before?
Last year around this time, my old high school chorus director reached out to me and explained that he had been invited to direct a choir at Carnegie Hall in June of 2024. He asked if I (along with some others he had contacted that he directed over the years) would be willing to participate and perform with him at Carnegie Hall. At the time, I couldn’t imagine saying no. But I hadn’t performed in decades—ions it seemed. I talked to my son about it, and he said “Well, it sounds like you need to join the choir at church. You have talked about it forever… Mom, this will be so good for you. You should definitely do this.” Though he was excited for me to have the opportunity to perform at Carnegie Hall, I knew that wasn’t what he was talking about. He was talking about me joining the choir. He was worried about me, everyone was. Ironically, a friend of mine and Vince from high school begged me to sing again after Vince passed, but I thought he had lost his mind. Yes, I had done it in high school, but that was 30+ years ago. This friend had played baseball when we were in high school years ago too, surely, he wasn’t going to dust off his old cleats and hit the field. There was no way I could sing again. It had been way too long. But then soon after that, the note came in from my old music director. And even if your musician days have long been over, how do you say no to Carnegie Hall?
When you lose a spouse, it feels like there has been a massive earthquake where your foundation is just totally gone and unlike an earthquake where it shakes and sometimes breaks, your foundation never comes back. Your best friend is gone, the person who leveled you out is gone, the person who knew you better than anyone is gone. There is such a vast space of emptiness and silence that it seems difficult to navigate through the void and know how to function within the quiet. When Vince was alive, he was truly bigger in every sense of the word than anyone I’ve ever known. Even his voice filled every space within every room that he was in. Though we weren’t married nearly long enough, especially at the age we both were, Vince was the caulk that kept me together. Without him, the fractures in me became more visible where before they had been hidden. The exposure of being who I was now without Vince was crippling emotionally for me. I didn’t want to be the person I was before, I wanted to be the person I was with him because that was the best version there ever was of me. But I didn’t know how to be that person without him.
So, I auditioned for the choir at Mount Paran, the choir that had given me so much through my years of attendance (in person and online) at the church. Mount Paran is a gospel choir of so much talent that it is almost intimidating. Imposter syndrome was slamming me hard, but I practiced “Amazing Grace” over and over, trying to somehow hide my lack of breath control lost from age, my snow machine accident where my lung was punctured, and probably every episode I have had of pneumonia or bronchitis for the last twenty or thirty years. Even though my nerves were at skyscraper heights (which meant I was nervously babbling about things to the extent that they probably had no idea what I was talking about) they still let me in. And when I say they “let me in” I mean, they welcomed me in. They included me. They even seemed to love me being there. Every broken piece of me.
My anxiety ramped up after the first of the year. Sometimes I could make it to rehearsal and church on Sundays, and sometimes I couldn’t. Sometimes I couldn’t get out of bed, and sometimes I made it all the way to the church and could barely get out of my car in the parking lot. I could do work without a problem, but social environments were crippling for me. But week after week I was greeted with open arms. Grace was given in abundance when I would send in emails that I couldn’t make it. Amazing, unyielding, and undeserving grace and love seemed to be all encompassing.
But when I did make it—I would focus on the crowd and pour my heart into delivering the song with enough power and love that God could reach every soul in the room with our blended voices. And I would pray, “Lord, let me be a vessel… let them feel the overwhelming love through our voices that you have shown to me.” And then I would see one stand… and then another… and then another. It fills me over and over again with the fact that I am able to give a message to them through the music that God blessed me with so many years ago. And unlike many gifts that fade, degrade, or rust over time, the God given gifts that He blesses us with remain in us despite the brokenness—because He is the creator of the gifts, and His gifts never expire.
I decided a few months ago that I was not going to pursue the trip to Carnegie Hall. But I realized at the same time that God was just trying to get me to do what my sweet friend had tried to do over a year and a half ago. It was about joining the choir. It was never about Carnegie Hall.
So now I miss less Sundays and practices and am there more and more. God has made the anxiety less and the comfort of sharing the message of Him even greater. It is the gift that I can give through the gift that I was given that keeps me coming back. I want to make more and more people stand when they hear our voices—and raise their hands with gratefulness to a God of the broken reminding them that they are whole in Him.
I want Heaven to be crowded. What gift could possibly be greater than that?