My Favorite Place in the World

I had a rough start to the week this week and today was no exception. Today was one of those days where nothing seems to go your way and you almost want to say, "Can this day get any worse?", but at the same time, you know it could get worse and you don't want it to. (That was a major run-on sentence). Anyways, I was having a terrible day and I needed to take a break and get out of the house.

Luckily, tonight was choir night, so that was my escape. My mom and sister couldn't come, so my dad and I went together. Our church is only a couple minutes away from our house, but it seemed to take much longer. I was trying very hard not to burst out crying. However, as soon as we got to the church and got out of the car, I lost it and could not hold it in anymore. Tears started streaming down my cheeks uncontrollably, and, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't stop crying. I had held it in for so long and it all burst out. My dad tried to comfort me and tried to get me to calm down a little bit. I finally breathed in a deep breath and started to pull myself together again. After I had wiped away my tears and started breathing regularly again, my dad asked me if I still wanted to go sing in the choir. I really didn't think I could sing very well after that crying attack, so I said not really. Then he asked me if I wanted to go into the church just to pray, and I thought that was a great idea. We walked in, my dad told our choir director that we would be there in a few minutes, and we walked into the balcony of the sanctuary and just sat there. We didn't talk for a long time. We just prayed and I, of course, started to cry again. I cried and prayed for a long time, and all of a sudden, I felt a lot better! My tears cleared away and I even started to feel happy. Then, my dad and I talked for a long time and then prayed some more. While I was sitting there, looking around our beautiful sanctuary, I realized something. I realized that our church is my favorite place in the whole world. I love it more than any place I have ever traveled to or seen. Whenever I walk into the church, I feel like all of my problems and worries in life are gone and nothing can hurt me. Everyone at our church is so friendly and I feel like we are all one, big family. I feel like I can trust anyone and everyone at church. It was great and I felt much better. Finally, my dad and I decided we wanted to go downstairs again and sing for the last 30 minutes of choir. We did and it made me feel even better to sing.

You know how people say everything happens for a reason? I guess all that bad stuff that happened throughout the beginning of my week happened for a reason... I learned that my favorite place in the world was our church, and that I can always go to our church and feel better, whether it is to pray, talk, or sing.

Up to the Mountain

Today our choir sang the song Up to the Mountain by Patty Griffin. It is a beautiful song that honors Martin Luther King and I really enjoyed singing it. Now I don't know what our choir director or the congregation thought (haha), but I thought we sounded good. Our piano player sang the solo part and sounded absolutely gorgeous and I felt proud to be apart of the choir this morning.

As we were rehearsing before church this morning, our director pointed something out to us. He called this particular verse to our attention... "Some days I look down, afraid I will fall. And though the sun shines, I see nothing at all. And then I hear Your sweet voice, oh, oh, come and then go. Telling me softly, You love me so." He read it out to us instead of singing it and let us hear how beautiful it was. "Isn't this the reason we are all here today?" he asked us. I thought that was a wonderful thing for him to do and say because we are all usually too busy trying to make sure we are singing the right notes that we don't really notice how wonderful and meaningful the lyrics to our songs are. That really opened my eyes and I will pay more attention to the lyrics in songs now. :)

If you would like to listen to the song, I have put it on the play list on this blog. It is called Up to the Mountain. Enjoy!!!:)