Periodically, I will challenge myself to give an update regarding the composing and music-making aspects of my life. The reasons for this are two-fold: 1.) I still write pieces of music and as such there are always updates to share, and 2.) I need to continue to challenge myself (like I mentioned above) to write about this area of my life.
Sometime after my last post on this topic (click here for more detail), I heard a couple of different people give the same feedback
related to this, via a cursory comment: “music-making is just a hobby.” To be
honest, it stung, and it probably always will. I know these people well enough
that what I believe they meant by this is just simply that it cannot be a full-time
career, enough to pay the bills and set up my future financially (let alone a
future with my love and any potential children that may arrive). I can verify
that this is true. I myself witnessed this growing up, as one parent stubbornly
clung on to their music-making career and suffered financially for it; the
other went the opposite route, essentially throwing away their music career in order
to attain a different line of work and was blessed financially for it.
However, when I hear someone say that music is “just a hobby,”
what I also hear is that sometimes one has to throw it away, and not come back
to it for years or even decades, if other things crowd it out. I’ve decided
that I disagree with that notion, on the grounds that I find this to be a key
crucible in my relationship with God, especially when I’m setting music to Biblical
text. I learned from my busy season in the fall, when I was working 2 jobs and
going to school, I didn’t have time to do much more with Scripture besides read
it for 5 minutes. First, that’s not enough time. Second, merely reading
something by itself doesn’t allow for it to sink in. I need to interact with
the text, and sometimes that means having time set aside to do something
creative with it. Whether that’s writing a piece of music with the words set to
text, or blogging about it, or, back in 2019 when I found composing music
impossible to come by for a while, creating a colorful art piece to illustrate
what God might be wanting to get through to me, I do need that kind of
immersion every once in a while.
To be honest, it took a while, until maybe a few weeks ago,
for me to find my grounding as I internally processed the phrase “it’s just a
hobby.” A significant part of it was simply that I just didn’t have time to deal
with it, pray through it, and make sense of it. Now that I have, I can claim it
(“it’s not just a hobby; it’s a key piece of my relationship with Christ and I
need to keep it!”) and move on to other things.
One thing, though, that I did notice God start to convict me
of again was of self-worship with the musical gifts He has given me, especially
that of composing. In my post from July 1, I openly stated my desire to be “like
the greats” of the Classical and Romantic eras and considered the quality of my
work (already!) equal or almost equal to their level. Moreover, I stated my
desire to be recognized in this world as such. It may not necessarily be wrong
to have dreams and aspirations of the such, but the key crucible is the
question of for whose glory. I realized that even in composing, I wanted it
once again to be for my glory.
It needs to be for God’s glory, and for His alone. Writing “Soli
Deo Gloria” on every piece of music is a good start, but it alone is not
enough. It also needs to come from the heart.
After all, it is He who has given me the gift. Not only so,
but He has shown me repeatedly that He can easily bless me with this gift and
with the accompanying opportunities – and He can just as easily take it all
away. It may not have been the first compositional drought I have ever experienced,
but what I experienced in 2019 showed me the depths of what being completely
unable to write music to save my life looked like. Not only so, but I remember that
year (as well as the preceding year) bringing the beginnings of sweeping
changes to all aspects of my life related to music, which at the time was a significant
part of my life. Several friendships splintered, several piano teaching clients
were lost, a few of my favorite colleagues either moved away or moved on to
other opportunities, attempts at compositional collaborations repeatedly
failed, all in the same season of life. Moreover, I believe that God revealed to
me that a few of the remaining friends/musical connections that I did have were
tied to the occult, whether directly or indirectly. COVID and all that came with
all major current events from 2020-2021 essentially took care of the rest.
The bottom line was, I needed to repent. Not just because of
my worship of self and of music, but also because, over the course of all the
years that I pursued it as the entirety of what I would do, I walked away from
God. Ironically, in the 3 to 4 years leading up to my baptism in December 2013,
in which I publicly declared my intent to follow Jesus and receive a personal
relationship with Him, following Him was what I did, failings and faithlessness aside. But
afterward, now that I was "officially" saved, I started turning to other things, assuming
(wrongly) that my walk with Him was now taken care of. (I wanted to be an adult
and receive all those blessings that I was pining for!)
5 to 6 years later, I finally began to see how much I had slipped, and moreover, the fullness of how I had allowed to influence me all those I connected with in the music part of my life. A key part that I also needed to see was how all that personal growth work I did in therapy, while it was good and important stuff, didn’t automatically translate to growth in my faith walk at all. I was getting stronger personally as an adult, but I was instead sliding backward in my faith. And how far back I slid.
I needed to see all that and be in a place of having seen just
about all of the areas in my life fall apart, for me to be willing to repent
and get back to doing things I hadn’t considered. I had to get to a place where
I could declare in my heart that I missed music-making when it was just God and
me. He heard that prayer. Slowly but surely, I started being able to compose
again, knowing that it was God who was supplying the inspiration, but allowing
me the freedom to assemble His inspiration as I saw fit.
Then, as other events continued to happen (the end of my
relationship with my ex, meeting my love, COVID, just to name a few), that
began to shape my own hunger and desire, as well as a clearer vision for both
what I actually wanted to do with music, as well as seeing what God wanted to
do as well.
As we like to say in our Christian faith circles, “I am
still a work in progress.” Composing has been not quite as easy to come by as
it was in 2020 and 2021, but I also know that, as I alluded to in my last post (click here for more detail), it’s
because I began to drift in my walk with Christ again. I expect that this will
always be a work in progress. I was blessed to be able to have both His
inspiration and (finally!) the time and opportunity to be able to put pencil to
paper when I came across 2 Timothy 2:11-13 on Christmas Eve. I do want these
things to be for His glory, all of it. There are some tough things related to
music-making I am still learning to accept that come with it, but I am willing
to work through it so as to get to that place of acceptance.
Meanwhile, God is still blessing me with ideas and concepts
for future musical creations, which I will detail further in my next post.