So just wanted to quickly share that one of the steps I’m taking to break off inhibitions is not only making and guarding time to write on my blog more frequently, but it is also making and guarding time to sing again.

I used to love singing for fun–it was a favorite pastime with one of my best friends in middle school and high school, singing tv tunes she had a songbook for, as well as accumulating sheet music for our favorite songs from Disney movies and the radio.

When depression hit me hard in my teenage years, singing at the piano became an emotional outlet, a place/time/space of retreat, when my family knew to leave me alone. I sang lots of Sarah McLachlan in those days– songs I didn’t understand to be that sad and depressing until many years later, because the melodies and words seemed to resonate with my heart and articulate certain thoughts so well — it was just reality to me. If no one happened to be in the house and I had a chance to play and sing completely on my own, then it was a time and place where I could also let my tears flow freely, an outlet for the pain and pressure that had begun to follow me everyday, through the good (when I’d have moments of distraction) and bad (when life actually made a bit more sense to me, because then my life and feelings seemed more in sync).

Starting to sing again these days has been telling, in that I find it difficult now to emotionally connect with the bulk of my old collection of songs, perhaps because some melodies are outdated now, but mostly because singing melancholy songs where the idea of hope is more of a question mark than a certainty is simply no longer what I know that I know to be true. It is no longer something I believe, the idea that’s the there is no way for things to change and become better, because I have learned, seen and experienced how God enters in and destroys ALL darkness, literal and metaphorical — physically, and emotionally, mentally, spiritually…

So I have been asking God to show me what songs speak my heart these days… Besides Frozen (I am awaiting my songbook to arrive sometime this month), God has really been putting an old, and probably most well-known, hymn on my heart especially in this past month: Amazing Grace.

I have been singing this song over and over in my head, and then also experimented with using my iPhone to record myself playing and singing it on my piano and keyboard…. As a step of faith to push myself and challenge the boundaries of my comfort zone, I asked one of our most trained and musically gifted singers from my Church to listen to a recording and give me tips. This past Wednesday, she also came over for an hour to provide my first ever session of personal voice coaching :). While I think it will take a season or two of practicing and experimenting before I might see any significant progress, it was exciting for me to learn what I can be learning and practicing to potentially improve my singing abilities.

I will be singing this song tomorrow at Church tomorrow for the offering song, and am feeling a bit nervous because I may or may not succeed in applying the lessons taught to me this week– but I am happy to have the chance to at least put forth what is currently my best effort…. And “my best effort” in that I’m actually able and willing to step out now and take a risk to try to sing better than my default, even if it means I may “succeed” or “fail” at doing so. Fear of failure is no longer something I’m going to worry about so much that I let it limit me from trying what is on my heart to try…