I guess it makes sense though... I got home at 11:30pm on December 23rd, and then the next morning was already Christmas Eve! I've said to numerous people since coming home that I adore the build-up between my home church's Christmas concerts on the first weekend of December and Christmas Day. I hardly had time to experience or enjoy that this year because right after my church's Christmas concerts I went back to Montréal and worked right up until I finished my internship the morning of the 23rd. Everything just flew by so quickly for me this December. Or last December, should I say, since it's 2019 now?
Anyway, this post is supposed to be all about 2019. Worship leading, lessons that I've been learning, y'all know how we do over here on the blog.
2019 started out pretty chill. I spent New Years with my best friend, just watching movies, laughing, playing games, and having a pretty legit photoshoot because I just had to have some good qual photos on my Instagram feed.
I'm a liiittle bit embarrassed by how EXTRA I am. But the photos turned out really cute sooo 🤷🏼♀️
My personal theme of "grace upon grace" for 2019 has already made itself evident. On January 4th, I randomly got sick. I say randomly because there was no notice beforehand that I was coming down with something. And by the end of the day on the 4th, my voice was gone, I had limited energy, and I was hacking up both my lungs. Ugh. And OH! I forgot to mention that I needed to lead music at a church on the 6th. 😱🙃
Normally that wouldn't be a big deal, right? Even I know that. If I was leading a team, I'd just tell them that I can't sing that morning and I'd just be playing piano and relying on someone else to lead vocally. But this situation was a bit of a big deal because my gig with the church I was heading to is that I lead the music by myself. Without a team, because the whole point of me leading at this church is to give their music team a break once a month.
So I found myself in a bit of a pickle. I could hardly talk to my family on Saturday, let alone even think about singing the next morning! Admittedly, my perfectionistic I-have-little-to-no-grace-for-myself-c'mon-Elizabeth-why-are-you-like-this mentality kicked in, but my throat hurt too much and I didn't have enough energy to be as hard on myself as I normally would be.
All I knew was that I needed to come up with a solution, and fast. It was far too last minute for me to cancel on this church, and I'd already planned the set list, and everything was ready to go. Everything except for my voice, of course.
In this situation, grace manifested itself in the form of my parents. At 7:30pm the night before the Sunday morning service, I made two photocopies of my sheet music, sat my parents down in the living room, and squeaked out the song map for each piece. Thankfully they knew all of the songs I'd chosen, and they endured my squeaky voice and slight impatience when rehearsal-appropriate mistakes were made due to my lack of energy and stress from the last minute-ness of this whole thing.
All in all, everything went really well on Sunday morning - much better than I'd envisioned it, by the grace of God. The church was impressed by my parents' singing capabilities, and I enjoyed the opportunity to focus on playing piano and not dividing my attention between singing and piano.
I learned to give up control. I had to trust that my parents would remember the order for each song. I had to trust that everything would work out even though I wasn't the one speaking to the congregation before/between/after songs/sets.
And so, it turns out that sometimes the LORD just has to take away my voice in order to humble me and teach me grace.
Post a Comment