A few months ago, I described a chink in the armor. Events have conspired (or put it another way, an opportunity has opened up) for me to reveal the chink...
What do you do when you run up against a road block? Can you realize that the road closed is impossible to go through, go over, or around? What if God is trying to tell you to move in another direction and is using that detour to tell you? At some points in our life, God intervenes in a manner to tell us to either move in a new direction or not to worry about trying so hard in one area of life because he needs you in another area of life. Sometimes we don't want to and we try to prove God's path is not the right one. But like Jonah, God has a way of putting us on the path he wants us to go on.
I had one of those experiences growing up. I realized years later that there was a plan in place, but at the time I was running up against a road block, I wondered why things weren't going right. I haven't spoken much on parts of that past to Liz, because it mostly has no bearing on my current life.
That past concerns my 6 years of experience in Middle School and High School band.
Liz knows very little about it. She sort of knows that I played clarinet, but that’s about it. Up until now, she didn't know that in 3 of the 6 years I was in band, I was first chair (7th & 8th Grades in Middle School, and Junior year in the Overall High School Band). She knows very little about the John Phillip Sousa Band Award that has sat on my desk. There is very little of those days that she can look at.
In elementary school, I had shown a great amount of musical capabilities. I played piano and sang in choirs. Of course, it wasn't easy (the "Camptown Races" moment in 5th Grade is a perfect example), but I did pretty well. In middle school, I realized that I couldn't march with a piano, so I selected the clarinet as my instrument of choice for band over singing in Chorus.
Those band days were mixed. I always worked hard to try and be the best clarinet player possible. I always figured if I put in the effort, I would get a chance to perform some solos in concert band. But unlike my predecessors or successors, I never had a chance to show my capabilities. And in most of those six years, those efforts were largely under the radar as a musician. The lone bright spot was as a freshman in High School Band and for that, I owe a great deal of thanks to the former long time SGHS director, Bill Nettleton, for believing in me.
During a rough Junior year, I began to see signs that staying in the band was proving to be a problem. Little things here and there began to take a toll both in and out of the band, making the ability to perform at my best difficult. Even being 1st chair wasn’t as worth it as I thought. I realized that my Senior Year was going to be an even tougher year, and even though I still could have stuck around to defend the top clarinet spot, the cons of staying outweighed the pros. So the decision was made during my Junior year to not return for my Senior year. It was hard to not march or play in 12th Grade. There was more than one time during that final High School Year that I wanted to play or march, but I kept my word to not march or play in concert band. I felt all that musical effort I had put in for six years had been for naught.
In reality (though it took years after the fact to understand), for six years I had ignored God's plan with regards to my musical talents and God had humbled me for it. I had made a mistake of choosing band over choir. In college, I had the chance to atone for that misjudgment by joining the Valparaiso University Choir Kantorei and the music fraternity, Phi Mu Sinfonia, as a Junior. Both turned out to be great decisions. The Kantorei Tour in Spring was a wonderful tour featuring Bach’s “Jesu, meine Freude” and “The Cry of the Whole Congregation”, a John Stevens Paul work based on Luke’s narrative of Holy Week. As for the Brotherhood of Music, redemption came four years after leaving band at the Spring Weekend. Some of you know the story: The Sinfonians performing the Blues Brothers as an exhibition, Minnie the Moocher, and yours truly slowly descending from the top of the altar steps at the Chapel of the Resurrection doing a modified Cab Calloway. It was perhaps my finest moment musically.
Since college, I have continued to sing in choirs. I haven't touched the clarinet in nearly 15 years. It's now clear that God wanted me to continue musically as a singer. And I haven't looked back since. I still have my friends from the band years. Those friendships will never change. But my instrumental days are long over. My musical talents survive, in part because I made a hard decision to let go and embrace God's plan albeit like Jonah--a plan that needed a humbling detour to put me back on course.
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