Notes from the Studio

November 10, 2010

So I find myself back in music ministry, after a year away from it. Since we left it in summer of last year, Phyllis has been working as a librarian for the county library, and I've been teaching music, science and sign language at a Christian school.

Phyllis likes her library job very much, and will continue to work there, coming with me to perform at weekend concerts whenever she can. I on the other hand did not like teaching very much. I can easily say I've never had a more demanding and stressful job. It could have been a noble, rewarding and meaningful work (and it was about 5% of the time), but instead, it constantly eroded and diminished the best parts of me, until I could take it no longer.

When I first left the school, I puzzled for a while why God had called me into such a long, hard, dark road of constant work, stress, and problem-solving. I've been recovering from it for the last month ... the way one recovers, I imagine, from eleven months of increasingly barbaric trench warfare, followed by two months shell-shocked and wounded on the run behind enemy lines, and then 2 1/2 months more of soul-crushing hard labor in a prison of war camp.

I'm only now beginning to feel like my real self. It's good to laugh and play and sing again. It's good to like myself and my life again. I can see clearly enough now to know it wasn't all just a big, nasty detour. A necessary toughening, training and tempering has been worked upon me. And God was with me through it all - reviving, maintaining, inspiring, empowering, encouraging. I believe a much stronger man is returning to music ministry.