Music is the Mirror of my Soul

Happy Last Monday of June, my darlings!

I try to keep a lot of what's happening (at least the negative things) in my personal life from bleeding over into my blog.  I want my followers/readers to look forward to arriving at my pages, to be encouraged or amused or uplifted (or any combination of those), and to come away from a post happy and looking with anticipation towards the next time.


My blog is not a rant.  It is a place for the things I love to be shared with both old friends and friends I haven't met yet.

This being said, I crave your indulgence for one slightly less-than-cheerful selection for this Music Monday.  It has been thunder-storming quite a lot here in the Southeast, and the black clouds seem to be a reflection of my mood and of the things that are happening in my personal life.  You see, dear reader, for all that I am a bright beam of sunshine in most of my posts, I have a broken heart.  I hide it fairly well on a day to day, but sometimes the grief is overwhelming.  In these moments, I turn to music.  I acknowledge the pain and the struggle, and then I focus all of my attention on praising God.  He can heal any hurt, mend any break, and breathe new life into something which seemed for all the world to be dead.  He is the deliverer and redeemer of my soul, my tower of strength, my anchor in these raging storms.

Here, then, are 4 selections that are applicable to my struggles at the moment.  The first is a beautiful piano rendition of the song "My Immortal", originally done by the group Evanescence a few years ago.  This instrumental carries the melody in all the right ways, conveying feelings of grief and anguish, but always with a touch of tenderness and hope.  The second is a song by Natalie Grant that I have always loved.  The lyrics in the beginning deal with the loss of a child, which - PRAISE GOD - I have never experienced.  But her chorus of "how it feels, when the sacred is torn from your life and you survive" can be applied to other things that happen in life.  The death of my father is one, and there are other, more recent things that don't deal with actual death, but which hurt just as severely.

Acknowledging the pain and moving forward from it, the 3rd and 4th selections, both by the band Casting Crowns, focus on turning to my Comforter and Healer for help.
"If We've Ever Needed You" contains one of my favorite lyrics ever: "With shipwrecked faith..."  That so accurately sums up for me how we respond to a crisis.  But the body of the song is about giving over to the understanding that we can't do anything on our own.  Our very breath is not ours to breathe.  It is given to us with such deep love!  We NEED Him!
"Praise You In This Storm" is all about not waiting until after God does something in our lives, but through the pain, through the roller coaster of emotions, through the most frightening parts of our struggles.  No matter where we are, what has happened, or how impossible the situation seems, He is God and He is in complete control.  

Please enjoy the music, and let Him speak to your heart through it.  If you are not going through a time of trial, I rejoice with you!  He is good!  If, however, you are dealing with some hard things in life, He will comfort you!  He is good!