And I sang off-key!

Let me tell you a story:

Failure 1:

In my University days, I was in the choir, but was always on back-up. I admired those that led Praise and Worship during services and for some reasons, I believed I could do same. So, I took myself to my then Choir leader and told him I wanted to lead... His response ‘you cannot lead, but you are good at back up’.

I was de-motivated and in fact started to actually believe I could not lead.  I usually lead Praise and Worship here and there, maybe when having a devotion with myself, myself and yea, some of my classmates and friends.

I mentioned earlier I started to believe I could not lead right? I finalised this belief in few years’ time.

Fast forward 4-5 years’ time (New location and new church):

Failure 2:

In the month of February, all Church workers went on a break and allowed regular church members to run the whole service units (about 64 of them). I always had my eyes out for the Choir because they are phenomenal, so I decided to apply yet again to be a FEB volunteer member of the choir and yes! My name was called.

My first shot was when we all sang in the microphone so that the Choir leaders can familiarise vocally  with us.  After this, we started rehearsing, and they started giving the microphone to selective people, and I think I saw the microphone coming to my direction. I looked away and looked back, and she was giving me the microphone!! I have never shaken so much in my life, and am sure you can guess the level of vibration in my voice too.

I was given a shot and I vibrated it out.

My second shot -The Choir leaders are so nice they opened the floor to anyone who felt they could lead to come out during rehearsals to take a shot, and the bold ones did come out, and the shy ones usually get pointed out by the leaders to come out and take a shot. Yet again, I was called out, and yet again, it was a mess.

I poured out my mess experience onto my partner and told him, I think I am destined for back up and he said 'it is OK. We are all learning'.

NB: I was always on back up during the whole period of volunteering.

Fast forward 4 months’ time:

I changed my Church because I was led to and to ensure that I laid a solid foundation in the church and not run away to my previous church, guess what I did next?! I decided to join the choir.

Now, the choir in my new church is not as big as the others, it is a whole new territory for me and also, the kind of songs they sang were the ones I felt I was not destined to lead but back up.  Why? Because it is similar to the songs we sang during my University days and by now, I am matured enough to draw the line between fantasy and reality and my line was drawn.

I joined because I wanted to serve, be a part of the Church family and grow spiritually. So when, my Choir mistress in less than two weeks of joining sent me a text that I would be leading  Praise and Worship during Wednesday service, I almost passed out.

I called my partner and told him and he was shocked as me..LOL..I sent the songs to my Choir mistress for her to assess, she did not get back to me. I went early to service and during pre-service rehearsal no one commented on the songs and I was sent out into the battle field to lead God’s people into His presence. Summary: It was amazingly blessed and I got feedback from Church members! Feedback!! I never knew you get feedback from doing Praise and Worship.

Failure 3:

After my first debut, I got to lead Sunday ministration and also it was great! My confidence was rocketing as I got feedback again (Feedback! WOW); another time, I was told impromptu to lead Praise and Worship as someone pulled out and that went well also; Then my singing journey started having bumps.

On a particular Wednesday service, during pre-service rehearsal, I was told the songs had different beats and I was told various songs to add by different people and finally a list of songs were created.

When I went out that day, I truly have no idea what happened, either I was not ready, or scared of the songs given to me, or just, I have no idea. Summary: I sang all the songs in all the keys known to man-kind and maybe some nice animals too. I went from A-Z and took God’s children on a lyrical journey of keys. ROCK BOTTOM or so I thought.

My partner asked me how I did and told him bad, and He says ’It is not up to you to say. Let God be the judge of that’. This answer might be the only reason why I didn’t beat myself up with a physical cane.

I knew it was bad and people knew too. We didn’t need to look for an excuse but I think I knew what it was. Prepare well before hand and make sure guitarist starts playing before you sing and not when you have already started.

Failure 4:

After the earlier key-disaster, I was to lead Praise during offering and as I started singing, the guitarist kept changing the key (rather I was, so he had to) and finally we settled on one (in the middle of Praise) and I sang my heart out and I think people danced a lot, they forgot about the earlier disaster (or so I thought).

They gave me feedback that when I ad leap, there is a tendency for me to forget my earlier key and also a higher tendency for backups to change their key if they are to come in before I end my runs. (I did not even know I did runs! *sigh*)

Anyway I learnt my lesson, and gave myself a rub on the head that it is not as worse as the last.

Failure 5:

I am already very hard on myself, so you can imagine what my thoughts were when I knew I was leading Praise during offering again! In fact, I said, this better be the rising of the unicorn! Some songs were changed during rehearsals, took me by surprise but I was like Holy Spirit please HELP ME! I got the microphone and I started singing. The key was uncomfortable and whenever I opened my mouth to sing the next song, even after singing it in my head prior, it did not feel right, but the guitarist never changed the key on his strings, meaning! I am still on-key (MIRACLES!!)

I had gone through all my songs and the Pastor was not coming on stage. There was this uncomfortable shout from me of ‘everyone put your hands together’ to buy some time and think on a song, and my brain was not thinking.

Guess what I did?!

I sang the only song that came to my head, it was not off key but it was off beat! (HALF-MIRACLE!!)

So off- beat, I just started laughing as I sang it.

As I got to my seat, and someone patted me in my back and said, ‘well done!’  The first thing that came through my mouth was, ‘yea! Until the last one, right?!’ and I immediately remembered what my partner said to me ‘it is not for you to judge but God’ and I smiled.

Why this very long story?

Show me a man/woman that has not failed and you are looking at the face of a man/woman that has not made an attempt.

Do I like failing? Absolutely not! The amount of pain I feel when such happens isn't always from the fall but from myself and the pain is usually very high. Too high.

But Failing exposes me to me and shows me where I should learn, improve and shows me that they once said I could not do it and now I have done it. Even if it is a fail for now, at least I tried.

Can I promise not to go off-key? Trust me dear, I can’t; but I can say that I sing more in the shower, disturb my house mates with songs, Listen more attentively to those who I like the way they sing and I also do Praise and Worship collabo with my Partner!

Keep at it. No one was born knowing it all!

Feel free to tell me about your experiences!

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To Forgive or not To Forgive?

Forgiveness is not of the mouth, it is of the heart. Sometimes you reject scenarios that you prayerfully hope do not happen to you and I join you in prayer; But, just when they do, what would you do? This is where the true test of so many things kicks off. You get a sudden rude awakening forcing you out of your perceived reality into another reality.

You will be tested in so many levels. Depending on the degree of the relationship, so would your test differ. You would ask yourself so many questions, look for answers, accuse and shed some hot tears. You would be deeply tested because the ones we love the most are the ones who have the power to hurt us the most. We have given them our heart even if we recite on a daily basis ‘Guard your heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life’. We are human and cannot always be one step ahead of the heart-step. We cannot plan ahead the specific percentage we should let someone in and because we love them we end up letting them in fully. After all, Love should have no heart-boundaries.

Test list:

The personal evaluation of who you think you are will be tested.

Your self-esteem would be put on a platter of mental tests.

The foundation of your/the relationship will be called to question.

Your weakness/strength of the relationship will be tested.

Your concept of the meaning of love would be tested.

Your ability to fight and flee or fight and remain will be tested.

Your everyday living activities will be tested.

Your concept of rationality will be tested.

Your gift of remembering the past dreams and signs you saw will be enhanced.

Your idea of the other person would be brought to interrogation.

Their promises/words would be alphabetically tested.

Your ability to link current scenarios to previous situations would be tested

Your gift or non-gift of in-depth analysis of every single detail will be tested

Your body will be tested.

Your soul will be tested

Above all, your Spirit will be tested.

Would you forgive based on how sorry the ‘accused’ is?, Would you forgive based on ‘how many experiences of such you have had and how you told yourself if you smell such, it would be the plane ticket out?’, Would you forgive because you want to clean your heart room, let go of all ill-spirits and locking it up this time around for a very long time? Would you forgive ‘based on how much you want the relationship to work?’ or would you forgive because God said ‘you need to make up with anyone before you can approach Him?’  Would you even think about forgiving or consider it as an option?

The simple truth I believe is, you need to make up your mind that you would forgive before the incidence and not the other way around. I believe forgiveness is an end product and Grace from God is the shoe we wear through the process/journey. (We often say we have Grace from above, whenever we face hard situations or challenges, but do you know one can have a failing mentality and still be holding on to Grace?  What good is Grace if we do not have a mind-set of victory? My analytical mind would say, that sounds like Faith, and my same mind reminded me that when Peter wanted to walk on water, and Jesus called him forth, He did not stand in the boat waiting to appear on water, He walked! In one way or the other, the mouth can say Grace, but what happens externally starts from what the MIND declares!)

If you have the mind-set that you will wait for it to happen first and  God will grant you the Grace to forgive when it happens, you would not be able to let that Grace permeate you as it would seem as  mere air and your emotions would be the only real thing you feel, tugging into your mind, analysing what happened and didn't happen, creating scenarios, way out for him/her that he/she could have escaped, playing a million times in your mind the picture over and over again, reliving every single detail, and hurting yourself over and over again because for every time you think about it, you see another reason to be hurt and yes those reasons are true, not falsified because this person truly shattered you in pieces. There would be no space for Grace just yet because as you go down on your knees to ask for it because you truly deeply need it to breath, when you get up, you will unconsciously still relive what caused the hurt in the first instance.

The pastor asked me’ Do you have a word?’ you need a word to hold on to. You need God to give you a word or a revelation or a message that you would hold on to regardless of the storms, issues, pains, disappointments, short comings and tears. He asked again’ Find that word for yourself because it is beyond what has happened. It is in that word, you will find strength and Grace when you need it and in that word you would hold on to God because He does not lie and if He has given you the green light for this, He is on the driver seat and never got off for one second.

Forgiveness is hard, and I won’t sugar coat it. It is so hard that it can pull something away from you leaving a hole to be filled and the content of the filling is entirely up to you.

Forgiving another is almost as if you are acting as a fool (in the everyday standard) because truly if you told another the situation, you know what they will tell you. It is like been blind/numb to something that is tearing you apart because you know that if you did what everyone did, it is not who you are.

Forgiveness is getting on your knees praying for the already given Grace to start working ASAP and praying for the other person. It is cheating your mind to do what it doesn't want to do.

Forgiveness is letting go completely… even when you want to hold on to that one reason why you shouldn't  Why should you let go of the pain, when you were the pained? Why should you release the other person when they put your tears on full speed? Because it makes you bitter and clouds your mind and thoughts with vile, sad things.

Forgiveness is not doing the other person a favour; it is doing you a favour. To breathe again, live again, feel again, be more matured again, be victorious again, be one with lessons learnt again, smile again, love again, put the enemy to shame after all your joy is his meal, walk with head held high, rejoice again, laugh again, increase your standards higher than the last and be confident of who you are.

Nobody could have pulled that off and you just did. Why? Because you are extremely exceptional.  You would not go through the heat, if your creator did not think you were more than the heat. The child of God. Yes, you went through the pain, but who is standing, You.  Yes the hurt got you bed ridden, but who is standing now, You.

Imagine Jesus forgave all those people that beat him, spat at him, abused him, ridiculed him and yet, He said Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing!. I am sure you are saying right now, yea, she knew what she was doing with him and she did not even defend our relationship and I am sure you might also be saying, he sure did know when he was doing that to her even with eyes wide open even with me in the picture, but imagine if for one minute we exhaled and said, ‘Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing’.. Wow!

Jesus stands on our behalf in Heaven, interceding on our behalf, because we fall short every single second and yet we are blessed, fruitful, filled with blessings.. Another reason I say ‘thank God, God is God and not man!’

I do not know what phase you are in, maybe the blinds are pulled down and the room is so dark, no speck of light can penetrate, or maybe you are inhaling the dust from the many mental cob-webs that seem to invade your privacy, or just maybe you are crawling out of the bed looking for the money to buy the broom to clean up the mess caused, or just maybe you are simply exhausted. I want you to remember something: You would not be going through it, if you were not more than it. You are going through it because you are more than it.  

How did I know I was making progress? When I saw what caused it and I refused to look at it.

Romans 6 vs 1&2: Well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it?