The Voices in my Head Are Singing, by a former self (Or How Not to take the Little Things for Granted)

Green Spiders

I have a symphony in my head wherever I go. Literally orchestras and rock bands move through my cranium and at any given time something is playing inside there. Everything from heavy metal to classical, rap, rock, pop, ambient, you name it, and even now and then a little country melody plays. “You never know whatcha got til it’s gone,” tobyMac once said, and he was right.

One day I was hanging out with a friend who is very dear to me, and I think we weren’t really glorifying God and I probably should have been studying instead. We were wasting time and I knew it at that time. During that hangout time, my music turned off. I stopped short and gasped, because suddenly a huge silence pervaded my head.

“The music stopped,” I told my friend.

“Huh?”

“The music in my head went away!”

Then I really noticed it. Sometimes, in the morning during high school I would find myself singing in my bed as I woke up, but during the day I would usually forget about these notes from the daylight. That didn’t mean they weren’t there, however. They just played in the background of my head.

I would also really pay attention when it had words, because then I liked to sing along. Many of the songs came from artists I know and love, but some of them I’ve only ever heard in my head. I learned to play and record some of them, and I write down the ones that strike me.

Since my momentary silence, this little bit of joy in my life has become something I appreciate more and more. It’s like God’s little taste of heaven for me, every moment, and I’d like to give it back to Him.

Now, some days when I have my headphones in all day, my brain begins to depend on the pulses from the electronics. Then when I take my headphones out, there’s a little discontinuity, like the musicians had to scramble to get in their places again. I guess a lot of my life is like that. God gives us little things, just for us, that are beautiful and precious, and sometimes we have to learn to become more independent in order to use them to the fullest. In other words, headphones are good, but He wants me to take them out and let my own head enjoy His secret gift. I get too dependent on good things, and don’t always give God a chance to show me something more natural, and better. Everything has a balance.

Today I read in my devotional, “What makes God so dear to us is not so much His big blessings to us, but the tiny things, because they show His amazing intimacy with us.” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest) I have a friend who one time wrote something like, “I cling to hope from the little things that show me God loves me.” I do, too, and I think Mr. Chambers is right. A great woman of the faith also once told me a story about how she asked God to help her find an eggshell in her cake batter, and that somehow it seemed precious to her that He would care about that. I think to most people her story looks silly, but to me, with an eternal song in my head, there’s something precious about it. We know our friends by the little things about them. So what kind of little things from God have made YOU smile, friend?