Out With the Old, In With the New

Recently, I've been struggling with a lot of stuff.  Some pretty major emotional ups and downs and changes.  And finally, finally, today, I kind of just thought through things and decided that I really needed to get out of this rut I've been digging myself into for years.  I needed to turn around and give everything to God and let Him handle it.  I also realized that part of the reason I was have such serious emotional issues was because of my music.  I'm a Christian, yes, but that doesn't mean that I only listen to Christian music.  I've come to realize that little by little I have removed the majority of my Christian music from my MP3 player to make room for newer non-Christian music I had either heard or found.  As I thought about it today, I realized that at least 3/4 of my music was not Christian, and about 1/2 was not edifying or really good in any way.  I realized that I had started to subtly move towards some edgier music.  Nothing explicit, maybe a curse word here or there or a mild suggestion, but it was affecting me, and not in a good way.

I'm very sensitive to music, I always have been.  In one second, it can wake me up, make me want to fall asleep, make me happy, or throw me into depression.  And a lot of the music I've been listening to recently was either kind of edgy because it was just really upbeat and made me feel better or it was really depressing and just made me wallow in my own sadness and problems and what-not.

So, basically, I figured all this out and thought through it all while I was out, of all things, mowing this afternoon.  I always listen to my music when I'm mowing because there's nothing else to do.  You have to steer the thing, so instead of listening to its thunderous roar, I put in my earbuds and listen to my music while I drive around and mow.  So I started listening and it went from one really upbeat song to one really depressing song that I could just totally relate to.  Naturally, I started feeling depressed, so I started skipping through songs till I came to one called I Will Carry You by Clay Aiken.  Now I don't think this is technically a Christian song, but I always take it as one because it fits so perfectly with what God does for us.  And as I listened to this song, I decided that I needed to give everything up and give it all to God.  I also realized that the song I had been listening to previously was just making me feel even more sorry for myself, making me dwell even more on what was bothering me, etc.  And that's when I realized that I needed to make a major change.

So the first thing I figured I needed to do was pray, which I did, sitting on a noisy tractor, mowing the grass.  I prayed, asking God to turn my life around so that I could service Him and get my life back on track.  I also prayed that He would give me the strength to make certain changes.  The next step was to get rid of the non-Christian music on my MP3 player.  Now, I'll admit, I did not get rid of every single non-Christian song I own.  I still have a few on there, but the majority is now Christian music and the non-Christian songs are ones that won't negatively affect me and for the most part are just kind of fun and uplifting.  And I left on my classical music because its beautiful and I do like to listen to it on occasion.

I know there are other changes that need to be made, like getting back into reading my Bible everyday and re-starting my prayer journal to name two.  But this is my start and I keep praying that God will see me the rest of the way through and I know He will.

This post was originally published on Saturday, November 27, 2010.