He who sings scares away his woes. ~Cervantes

I love to sing.  To those who have known me longer than ten minutes, this comes as no great surprise.  Ever since I can remember, I've had one song or other going in the back of my mind at all times, and when content I tend to hum along with the music as I do chores and tasks throughout the day.  I do play a handful of instruments as well, but I consider voice my primary instrument and take the most pleasure in using it and using it often.

Since moving to Del Norte, the prospects of using my voice for anything more than group worship on Sunday mornings at church have been very dim.  This area of the state isn't exactly known for its booming music scene, and being the shrinking violet I was for a large chunk of time after we moved here, I was far too anxious about meeting new people to go out and seek out opportunities to sing with them.  So I sang with the radio and reminisced about my high school and university choral groups.  Not at all satisfying.

Then, wonder of wonders, a community choir began right here in Crescent City!  I eagerly joined and had a complete blast for a while, even garnering a solo on a song I wasn't all that familiar with.  But slowly, the glitz of the choir wore off and I was left feeling dissatisfied, wanting to be more than one voice in a group of nearly a hundred.  Something was lacking in the experience, so I started looking again. 

Our church worship leader had approached me about joining the team for a while, but the schedule never worked out for me.  A couple of weeks ago, I was able to move some things around and showed up for the first time ever to worship practice.  My voice was still recuperating from a nasty cold, so I did a little bit of keyboard and waited impatiently for the raspiness to go away.

This Sunday everything clicked.  Not only was I able to sing most of the notes (the cold is almost gone!), but it all felt right.  Everyone was in top form so the instrumentation was fantastic.  I got to do vocals with a dear friend who doesn't give herself near enough credit for her singing abilities, and I had a sense of peace and belonging about being up there that I've never had with any other group I've been part of.  Without a doubt, this is what I'm intended to be doing right now and I plan to enjoy every minute!