When You Answer the Call of Music

When I was a little girl with a square, red-cheeked face, and chubby fingers, about the age of three, I started to tinker on our upright piano, and tried with my little brain to make a melody. Nana, my music teacher grandmother, said that it was time to teach me how to play the piano. It didn't matter that my fingers were short and fat, the desire grew in my heart, and so we began.

The music filled my heart and soul, even at a young age. I used to sing to the horses, cows, and bulls on our farm, sometimes standing right next to their giant pillars of legs. Father once found me singing to our two thousand pound bull in his bullpen! The animals seemed to have a sense of my vulnerability and innocence, and didn't ever attempt to hurt me. I always felt that I knew what they were thinking.

As I grew up, I never lost my love for music. Indeed, the piano, accordion, organ, and guitar were my favorite instruments. My first singing solo was at the age of nine for the spring concert in elementary school. My interest burgeoned after that, and father took me to all the Broadway musicals that came to St. Paul and Minneapolis. I remember my brothers hollering to our parents, "Mom, Dad, make her stop!" I played the piano in our living room for hours on end, and they didn't appreciate that it interrupted their evening TV entertainment. After that, my dad bought me a piano for my bedroom. Every moment that I didn't do chores, homework, or make dinner, I spent at the piano.

When I was thirteen years old, I began voice lessons with one of the most renowned voice teachers of all time, Madame Mady Metzger-Ziegler, famous for her hay days at the Berlin Opera, the Deutsche Staatsoper. She taught me well and hard, and stretched my voice to the full breadth of a coloratura soprano: four octaves. She sent me out for auditions for various community events and productions, which led to my first leading role in an opera at the age of fifteen, and the opportunity to record with the Boston Pops at the age of sixteen.

Through my life, I performed at various amateur and professional venues, and then I stopped. I still don't know for certain why I stopped. A few years ago, I rediscovered music at our very large church and became part of the choir, with occasional special roles. That led to the beginning of my own music ministry, a mini-choir of twenty-two people who sang mostly gospel music. After that, I started a praise and worship band, and began to tour the area. It expended an enormous amount of energy: the practices, the setup and breakdown of equipment, the performances, and I lost fifteen more pounds.

I wrote music all hours of the day and night, built a recording studio, and recorded the music. Lyrics poured out of me in a flood of inspiration, and then "The Spirit Series" of books, which went international at the onset. The time spent writing and publishing the books overwhelmed me, and so I discontinued my music ministry. My husband, Don, suggested on a beach in Hawaii, "Why don't you try writing some fiction?" I thought, "Why not?" I retreated to our room upstairs and retrieved my notebook and "The Faith Series" of Christian fiction began. I've now finished the fifth and last book in this series, and it, too, is spreading around the world.

Up until about three months ago, my church attendance started to wane with travel, problems with insomnia, and my workload, all bad excuses for not attending church regularly. At one point, I didn't attend church three weeks in a row. That's when it happened: the Holy Spirit convicted me big time for not using the gift of music that God had given me at a very young age. I wasn't using it to worship Him, which is the reason God gave me the gift in the first place. I understood what God wanted and returned to church to sing out in the congregation in a full emotional voice of praise. I concocted harmonies and descants for worship and praise songs and sang out my love for God with my hands in the air. It made me feel so much better.

Groups of people chose to sit near us, and people said to me, "I hope you're going to sing today." This morning, my heart felt overwhelmed with glorious thanks to the Lord for being so supernatural that the Creator of the universe could come down to earth in the form of a little baby. The more I sang to His praise, the more I felt like continuing. When God is gracious enough to give us a gift, it is not for a defined period of our own determination, but for a lifetime. God never calls us and then takes back the call. From this moment on, I will sing to the praises of the Lord, until I sound like a croaking frog. To God, it will sound like an angel singing in perfect angelic harmony, such are the ways of the Lord.