The theme of the past few months for me has been dependency and weakness. And God has been showing me that this is His way. Jesus humbled himself, made himself "weak," vulnerable, a servant, and what he allowed to happen to himself in being humiliated and crucified, was the only way to save humanity and all of creation. By giving himself over to death and the grave, he CONQUERED it! The wisdom of God is foolishness to us. This concept was only ever something I embraced with my mind, or "theologically." I certainly hadn't really explored the possible implications for my life in a practical way, as I am now being forced to do.
I woke up Monday morning with laryngitis, totally unexpected. This is the second time this has happened in the past 6 months. But this wasn't the beginning. Since high school, I've been plagued with fatigue problems, despite a healthy vocal technique, cold after cold after cold, no matter how may vitamins I took or how much sleep I got, and now laryngitis. These things have happened at EVERY MAJOR SINGING EVENT of my life. EVERY ONE. WHAT IS UP??!!! AAHHHH!!!! Do you want me to sing or not?!!
I got so angry this time, I prayed. :) I asked people to pray for me, and one of them even suggested that I fast, and sit and ask God what he means in all of this. Shocking, I know. What is even more shocking, I did it! I went upstairs yesterday afternoon, when I should have been doing some work, and sat with God. I sat, and resolved to listen. I cried a lot, I begged, I told him that I wanted to hear from him. I just can't take this anymore. And guess what? He spoke to me in a deep, profound, frightening way.
Do you know who Mahalia Jackson is? She had a PHENOMENAL voice, and rather than pursuing a professional career, which she could have had, she sang only in church, for God. And despite that :), she became famous. I'm not appealing to that last part, about becoming famous, rather, about not pursuing a professional musical career. As you all know, God has called me to full-time ministry. And for years I've struggled to understand just what God meant with giving me this musical gift and so much wonderful training, and at the same time, a heart for ministry and the poor. He's never let me off the hook in any way from either of those callings. And in the conventional sense, they don't go together at all. So life has been confusing, to say the least. I've been desperately hanging on to God's coattails and hoping for the best. Recently, in the face of overwhelming evidence from God that this is what he has for me, I have embraced this call to ministry, naturally assuming that music would play a part in that. And what I heard when I sat down to listen to God today makes me believe it still will. Just in a MUCH bigger, deeper sense than I had ever imagined before.
A huge part of my story is how God called me out of horn playing into singing. And then after my second year of grad school in Boston, at the height of my confusion in terms of vocation, inviting me to Germany again to play with Eurobrass (www.eurobrass.de). THIS MADE NO SENSE TO ME, but I was compelled for some reason to go. "God, I thought you told me to sing instead!" The deadline for my decision had come, and as I prayed, my spirit was led to Matthew 4: "Jesus called out to Simon and Andrew: 'Come, be my disciples, and I will show you how to fish for people!' And they left their nets at once and went with him." "But God, WHAT NETS!!! I'm still in school, and I'm so confused! Sob, sob, sob." But not so confused that I couldn't hear that he wanted me to go back to Germany that summer. So, I went. And it was amazing. And then days after I made the decision, really, DAYS!, NEC offered, out of the blue, to invite me back for a third year, and give me all the opera roles I could hope for. How about that. And then, the two major ones I almost couldn't perform due to vocal health issues. How about THAT. The "net lesson" has been a formative one for me, and has come back often in my struggle to discern God's will for my life. I've come quite a way since then, but still, I could never imagine that God would ask me to give up doing at least a little bit of music professionally. I thought that was just part of the deal. (The lessons I learned in conservatory run deep.) BUT AFTER TODAY, I think he IS calling me out of that. During my prayer time today, God directed me to Isaiah 61. You know this one, from which Jesus quoted when he stood up in the synagogue to give his "mission statement": "The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is upon me, to preach good news to the poor; to comfort the broken hearted; to proclaim that captives will be released, and that prisoners will be freed, and that the time of the Lord's favor has come. To all who mourn in Israel, he will give a crown of beauty for ashes, a joyous blessing instead of mourning, festive praise instead of despair. In their righteousness, they will be like great oaks that the LORD has planted for his own glory."
I see God calling me to this in a more significant sense than I had before. And FOR HIS OWN GLORY. In Gary Haugen's book "Just Courage" (which you can download for FREE until the end of the month at www.christianaudio.com :) he says that the only way the brokenhearted, poor, marginalized will know that God loves them, is if we, the church, show them, and tell them. Ground-breaking, I know! He tells of Harvard lawyers going to places like Cambodia to free children from the sex trade, saying: "I know God loves you, because he called me to leave my job, my home, and he sent me here to tell you." I see God now telling me to leave my home, all my training that prepared me to be a professional musician (my nets), to do just that.
For a long time, I was angry with God for not gifting me in a more "practical" way to minister to the hurting. But I am certain now, especially after today, that God wants me to sing (and play my horn, can't forget that!) for the captives, prisoners, and the broken hearted, in all the manifold manifestations of those conditions. I think he wants me to be able to tell them that God loves them, because he sent me to sing a new song to them; a song that he gave me by saving me, giving me a voice, and sending me to sing to them of his love. And this new song is foolishness to the world, to me even!
Today, God showed me that music is more than "something I'm good at, something I do." He has made it an integral part of who I am, inseparable from the kind of ministry he has chosen to give me. He is the potter, and what does that make me? Right. And I, especially, need to remember, THIS IS FOR HIS OWN GLORY. Because in the crudest sense, even right this moment, part of me is thinking: "You had me go through all that training, to spend my life with the poor?! Far away from the concert hall?!!! That doesn't make sense." But according to what I've read in the Bible, it makes perfect sense. Yep. And that's the only reason why I think this is what He is asking me to do. "My ways are not your ways", etc.
This is also where weakness comes in. "So, God. You're sending me? Just, me? Without a promise to fulfill all the wonderful musical things I had planned? Without my professional musical identity, what do I really have to offer? That classical music training was the only way I could understand why you are sending me to Germany, and not a developing nation, for instance." And to that God says, "Kristi, you have been trying to minister out of your own strength, according to your reasoning. I need you to give yourself fully to me. I am what you have to offer, nothing else. And in this, what you consider your 'weakness', is where my power can work." OOOHHHH. We quote that verse so often, and I'm finally starting to understand what it means! I mean, according to our normal way of thinking, what good did Jesus do by coming to suffer with humanity? By leaving his throne to sit with sinners and the poor? Again, I don't understand God! It takes me forever to come around to his way of thinking. So, while music is good, it is only "good" if God is offering it through me, in the way he wants to. And apparently, this is it. It is God that the broken and hurting need, not me. And I need to give him "my music" to use as he sees fit.
I've been repeating to myself and others about how powerful music is, but I never understood exactly what it meant in the grand scheme of things. And practically speaking, I'm still not sure I know how I'm supposed to go about this. But what I do know, is that I think God is asking me to put my musical gift on the shelf in the conventional sense. I think he wants me to live by faith, not being able to "earn" income (in a meaningful way) by singing, so I can be completely devoted to, well, something else. People. Prayer. I'm not quite sure. But I get the sense that the Spirit will tell me once I'm there, and that I need to be completely free to hear that voice, and do what it says.
Even if the only "real singing" I do is for our church services and "faith, arts and culture" concerts. Even if it means sitting for hours on a street corner listening to a person who is mentally ill talk about nothing that I can understand. Or looking like a crazy person, singing while I walk around praying for the city. Or babysitting for a single mom so she can take night classes. Or giving free music lessons to immigrant and refugee children, or, or, or... This is completely different from how I had imagined my ministry in Europe turning out. And maybe I misheard God... maybe this is just part of the process he's taking me through. But I don't think so.
Why don't I think so? While I was praying one day in North Carolina, God gave me a powerful image, one that I didn't fully understand at the time. This might seem weird to some of you, it was for me too!, but here it is: I saw myself kind of floating (I told you it was weird) over Europe, and one brilliant, sustained note, that went on forever (It was a C# if you're interested :)), came from my mouth. It originated with God, and was almost like a part of me, like it was coming from the depths of the universe, through me. In fact, I think I was being held up by the tone itself; I would have collapsed if I had stopped singing. From that note, I saw something like gossamer float down to cover the land. And then, suddenly, people, buildings, the entire landscape of Europe changed. They slowly grew up from the ground and rose higher and higher and higher, and everything that was formerly darkness was transformed into LIGHT! The people of Europe were sowing love and peace and justice. Now it's starting to sound a bit hippy-ish, but that's what it was like! And I wasn't directly responsible for any of it. I was doing my part, by allowing God to sing that note through me, but it was GOD who caused all this!!!
Since that day, I wondered what that meant for me, for my singing.
I could NEVER have come up with such an idea as that on my own. And after yesterday, I feel free, somehow. I feel focused and purposeful in a whole new way. It's still a foreign concept to me, this giving up music in the professional sense, but I see God in it. I didn't post this yesterday, because I wanted to ask God again today if I really heard him correctly. This doesn't mean I can't sing wonderful music that I love so much, but it means that I will do it in a completely different context than I thought possible. I think God wants to free me from the for-me-narrow confines of the conventional "concert hall", in order to employ me (with a fest contract and health insurance and everything! :)) in HIS concert hall: one that, most importantly, will give the best seats in the house to those who would never be allowed into a regular concert hall for various social or financial reasons. "Sell all your belongings and give the money to the poor, then come, follow me." I don't have much by way of earthly belongings, but music, and myself, I can give.
For more than a year I have been carrying around with me a card on which my friend Rachel pasted a quote by Henri Nouwen: "The world is waiting... for new saints, ecstatic men and women who are so deeply rooted in the love of God that they are free to imagine a new international order." YES! I want to be in that group! I've been carrying around that card, hoping that God would reveal what that meant for me. I think God has been rooting me deeper and deeper in his love, and I was just deep enough now to be ready to hear him break the news to me. News that is both better than I could ask or imagine (and also frightening), while also being difficult because of what he's asking me to give up (which is really nothing that I didn't have in the first place, with my years-long, cumbersome, and annoying vocal issues.) And the ecstatic part! Let's face it, when I'm really being myself, with all the expressiveness and feeling that God has given me, I don't really fit into "polite society." :) I think God is asking me to embrace this more (the term "fool for Christ" comes to mind here) :), to become more the person he created me to be.
So, when I think about it, when I really consider the implications of this, here is what I come up with: a "new international order" in which I, a classical musician, after having been trained for years at a wonderful and very expensive conservatory, am sent by God to Germany to sing with the homeless, the marginalized, the lonely and forsaken. And not just once a week, or once a month. ALL THE TIME. Not that I'll sing (literally) all the time :), but that I, Kristi the singer, am being called into a new paradigm.
It seems to me, this is God offering me the chance to be able to tell people who are SO in need of God's love, that I know God loves them, because he asked me to leave the conservatory and all that it means, to come and tell them, to sing to them and with them of his unfathomable love. And to somehow, please God, strengthen and encourage the German church as it seeks to follow Christ in new, surprising, and radical (to us) ways, according to this "new international order", according to God's unique call in the life of each individual in that church. The church plant I'm going to work with is called: "Cologne Project: making room for Jesus." I pray for the courage for us all to give Jesus the space to challenge our ideas of how we are to be in the world, so he can give us new and better ones, straight from Heaven!
I kept asking to have a gift to give; He had already given it to me. To paraphrase Jesus after he told the disciples to do the "impossible" by feeding the 5,000, and they scoffed at him saying they didn't have enough to do it with: "Well then, give me what you have, and I will work the miracle." He wants me to give him what I have, even though I wouldn't deem it "enough." He has and I am sure will continue to show me the value in it, even though it's foolishness to me, and I would prefer to have something better, or use it differently. "Come, be my disciple, and I will show you how to fish for people." Included in this, though I didn't know it at the beginning!: "When Christ calls a person, he bids him or her come and die." I believe, Lord. Help my unbelief.
