Hands shaking, heart pounding, dry throat, and an uncomfortable churning feeling in my stomach; how did it come to this? Normally I’m not a nervous person, the thought of speaking in front of people gives me excited shivers up and down my spine. I am that kind of person that jumps at the opportunity to speak in public. Giving lectures in college, leading Bible studies, sharing my testimony, even delivering inspirational speeches are things that bring me the most joy. So why was it that in South Africa in front of a group of 16 students, all of which were under the age of thirteen, I experienced terrible stage fright. Well; because I wasn’t about to speak. This time I was siting on the floor, ukulele in hand, surrounded by the school choir.
In the Philippines, during a moment of pure insanity, I decided to but a ukulele. I have always wanted to learn how to play a stringed instrument, and since the Race is a place to grow and change, I figured why not. Since that day I have been in the constant process of teaching myself how to play, to the occasional great regret of my poor teammates, (whoops sorry guys). I have recently realized that my main motivation for learning how to play is that I love to sing and worship the Lord. In the Psalms it mentions making a joyful noise to the Lord with instruments; I mean even David played the harp. I have always wanted to be able to worship in that way, the only other instrument I can play is the trombone which doesn’t really enable simultaneous singing. I love my ukulele, it is my go to every time I am having a difficult time I pick it up and play songs to God and whenever I am overjoyed I have a jam session. But with all of the playing and singing, I only really do it when I am alone.
The problem with having an instrument on the World Race is that every time you arrive in a new place people notice you carrying it, and normally when a person is carrying an instrument it is assumed that they can play. So when my team and I arrived in Howick, South Africa I was immediately labeled as the “musical” person by our contact. Now this month my team and I are doing Unsung Heroes, which means we are traveling around looking for new ministries for AIM to partner with; we had come to Howick to visit some schools that are being run my local churches. We would be visiting four schools, the last of which we would need to “entertain” the children, I was asked to bring my ukulele for that purpose.
The day was going well, we had visited three schools and I had been able to avoid the display of my supposed musical talents. Then came the fourth school and choir club. At the school the team split up to join the kids in different clubs; some went to do puzzles and others jumped in with the Zumba club. As someone who wanted to avoid dancing and puzzles, is less than mediocre at chess, and probably should not mess up the sewing projects it fell upon me to sit in with the choir.
Luckily I was not alone because my teammate Emily was in there with me. Yes we have the same first name, and yes it is very confusing a majority of the time; however, by the grace of God she has a beautiful voice. Previous to our school visit we had joked about starting a band called Em² but we firmly intended for that forever to remain a joke. We were not laughing when we were surrounded by a group of children who were asking us to play them a song. Emily suffers from stage fright, and I have always believed what my older sister said when she compared my voice to a dying walrus. Needless to say I really wanted Emily to sing for them, but I knew she wouldn’t do it unless I was singing as well. It is the though of singing in front of people that reduced me to a nervous wreck.
In spite of the shaking of my hands that made strumming very difficult for the first few chords, and the nervous squeaking of our voices we made it through and the kids loved it. We were able to spend time teaching them how to sing the worship song How He Loves and it is probably on of my favorite race moments thus far. The fear was overwhelming, but once I closed my eyes and just played for Jesus the fear went away. I am not planning on becoming a worship leader ever, but I am just starting to realize that it doesn’t matter how we sound, it only matters that we are singing songs to our Father, the rest is just background noise.
