Dream Explosion!
So, let's just say, a lot has happened in my life recently.
God currently has me in a season of rapid growth and increase... He's growing my dreams in ways I honestly never imagined possible in the course of a month's time.
Let's start from the beginning.
Almost 3 years ago, in the spring of 2015, I was finishing up my International Studies degree, living at home, and just finally realizing that God was more than ok with me pursuing music as an actual calling/career. I was discovering that He actually wanted me to pursue the gifts He had given me and that following Him could actually mean doing exactly what I enjoyed doing the most!
I also had just started dating Josh, and discovering what it meant to be a daughter of God, so that was a sweet, Jesus-filled season that I honestly will cherish forever... Some of my very best memories in life so far are from that season and I am so grateful for it.
As far as the whole music calling thing, I didn't quite know what that even meant or was supposed to look like. But I figured it wouldn't hurt to just start writing songs. So, when my Aunt put up an idea to do something called "100 days of creating" on Facebook, I decided I'd write a song a day for 100 days (I think I only made it to day 60 lol... still working on the whole commitment thing...).
That went really well and I still have about 60 half finished songs on my computer from that time.
After doing that for about 2 months, my parents moved to California and I moved with them for the summer, went to Bethel's WorshipU, took another Bethel course on preparing for marriage (I'm also working on overcoming my slight Bethel obsession lol), and spent a sweet few weeks with my family before heading back to Alabama where I got engaged and married to Josh shortly after that (engaged in September, married end of November!)
All that to say, the whole music thing didn't really go anywhere after I went to Bethel except that I had a lot to process from what I learned. But other than that, I didn't really do much songwriting or anything while I was wedding planning, finishing my degree, and doing premarital counseling.
This didn't change much after I got married because we got pregnant only a few weeks after getting married, I got incredibly sick from the pregnancy and couldn't leave my bed for about 3 months, and literally right when I was getting well enough to function again, we moved to Florida for Josh's new youth pastor position.
Then it was moving in, meeting friends, finding our place at the church, helping Josh with youth ministry, giving birth, becoming a mom, etc, etc, etc... Life happened and I honestly didn't think my dreams of doing anything other than volunteering with worship at the church was gonna happen any time soon.
On top of that, we desperately needed me to start making some kind of income, so I tried searching the internet for weeks and months trying to figure out how to make a healthy income from home without going against my convictions about the way I wanted to live my life for Jesus.
Nothing panned out... I felt like God was barring the door literally everywhere I went. I even applied to work evenings at Chickfila but God told me I wasn't supposed to take the job, so I didn't...
It was all so frustrating and exhausting but I finally gave up and said, "Ok, God. I'm done trying to figure this income thing out. You're gonna have to show me what to do and you're gonna have to provide for my family." It took me about a year and a half of worry, stress, confusion, and small patches of actually trusting and following God to come to that place.
And at the same time as I was surrendering our finances to Jesus, I was surrendering my music to Jesus. Since November last year, so almost a year ago to the day, I had said, "Ok, Jesus. I know you want me to pursue music, so I'm going to."And for a year, I have been struggling to follow the Holy Spirit on that journey as well.
Basically, let's just summarize it all and say that the last year of my life has been one long string on me trying to figure my life out and God say, "Nope, not today honey." lol But I'm so glad He did. Because otherwise, if He'd given me success on my terms, in my timing, I wouldn't lean on Him for everything after that. I would have just taken the dream and ran with it all on my own instead of learning to follow Him daily and surrender things to Him moment by moment and keep moving forward even when nothing made sense... But, here's where the story gets really good.
A few months ago, I saw a Facebook ad for an online course taught by a stay at home mom of 5 who had found a way to make a living creating and promoting her own music (instead of going through a label) using the internet and social media. I was like, "Sign me up!!!" lol, but I didn't want to jump ahead of God AGAIN, so I waited.
Anyways, long story short, I thought about the lady and her course for at least a month or two and researched and prayed and just begged God to show me if this was what He had for me to do in this season of life - making music as a stay at home mom and getting it to the world through the internet.
And about a month ago, I knew He was saying, "Yes!" He showed me that THIS is what I've been waiting a year to find! THIS is the solution He has for our family to have financial abundance! And THIS is the way He wants me to pursue my calling of music as a stay at home mom! Who would have ever thought in a MILLION YEARS that something like this would even be possible?! But it's true... This is the road He has for me and I'm running down it as fast as I can!
So less than a month ago, I signed up for the course! And I kid you not... since then, I have finished 11 songs from that season of "100 days of creating", sent them out to a friend from college who helped me edit some of them and figure out what instruments I needed to add to record them, got in touch with a guy who is going to help me make some initial recordings of my songs and who gave my information to another guy who owns a studio in Lakeland, and the studio guy called me the same exact day to set up a meeting to go decide if we'd be a good fit. And I met with him AT HIS STUDIO two days ago and nailed out a lot of the details of what recording will look like and, if all goes well, it is likely I'll be starting the recording process in the next month or two!!!!
WHAT IS LIFE?!?!?!!? lol! :D
God is so so good... He's walking me through this process so well and showing me the path I need to take to follow Him.
And it is more exciting than I could have dreamed.
God currently has me in a season of rapid growth and increase... He's growing my dreams in ways I honestly never imagined possible in the course of a month's time.
Let's start from the beginning.
Almost 3 years ago, in the spring of 2015, I was finishing up my International Studies degree, living at home, and just finally realizing that God was more than ok with me pursuing music as an actual calling/career. I was discovering that He actually wanted me to pursue the gifts He had given me and that following Him could actually mean doing exactly what I enjoyed doing the most!
I also had just started dating Josh, and discovering what it meant to be a daughter of God, so that was a sweet, Jesus-filled season that I honestly will cherish forever... Some of my very best memories in life so far are from that season and I am so grateful for it.
As far as the whole music calling thing, I didn't quite know what that even meant or was supposed to look like. But I figured it wouldn't hurt to just start writing songs. So, when my Aunt put up an idea to do something called "100 days of creating" on Facebook, I decided I'd write a song a day for 100 days (I think I only made it to day 60 lol... still working on the whole commitment thing...).
That went really well and I still have about 60 half finished songs on my computer from that time.
After doing that for about 2 months, my parents moved to California and I moved with them for the summer, went to Bethel's WorshipU, took another Bethel course on preparing for marriage (I'm also working on overcoming my slight Bethel obsession lol), and spent a sweet few weeks with my family before heading back to Alabama where I got engaged and married to Josh shortly after that (engaged in September, married end of November!)
All that to say, the whole music thing didn't really go anywhere after I went to Bethel except that I had a lot to process from what I learned. But other than that, I didn't really do much songwriting or anything while I was wedding planning, finishing my degree, and doing premarital counseling.
This didn't change much after I got married because we got pregnant only a few weeks after getting married, I got incredibly sick from the pregnancy and couldn't leave my bed for about 3 months, and literally right when I was getting well enough to function again, we moved to Florida for Josh's new youth pastor position.
Then it was moving in, meeting friends, finding our place at the church, helping Josh with youth ministry, giving birth, becoming a mom, etc, etc, etc... Life happened and I honestly didn't think my dreams of doing anything other than volunteering with worship at the church was gonna happen any time soon.
On top of that, we desperately needed me to start making some kind of income, so I tried searching the internet for weeks and months trying to figure out how to make a healthy income from home without going against my convictions about the way I wanted to live my life for Jesus.
Nothing panned out... I felt like God was barring the door literally everywhere I went. I even applied to work evenings at Chickfila but God told me I wasn't supposed to take the job, so I didn't...
It was all so frustrating and exhausting but I finally gave up and said, "Ok, God. I'm done trying to figure this income thing out. You're gonna have to show me what to do and you're gonna have to provide for my family." It took me about a year and a half of worry, stress, confusion, and small patches of actually trusting and following God to come to that place.
And at the same time as I was surrendering our finances to Jesus, I was surrendering my music to Jesus. Since November last year, so almost a year ago to the day, I had said, "Ok, Jesus. I know you want me to pursue music, so I'm going to."And for a year, I have been struggling to follow the Holy Spirit on that journey as well.
Basically, let's just summarize it all and say that the last year of my life has been one long string on me trying to figure my life out and God say, "Nope, not today honey." lol But I'm so glad He did. Because otherwise, if He'd given me success on my terms, in my timing, I wouldn't lean on Him for everything after that. I would have just taken the dream and ran with it all on my own instead of learning to follow Him daily and surrender things to Him moment by moment and keep moving forward even when nothing made sense... But, here's where the story gets really good.
A few months ago, I saw a Facebook ad for an online course taught by a stay at home mom of 5 who had found a way to make a living creating and promoting her own music (instead of going through a label) using the internet and social media. I was like, "Sign me up!!!" lol, but I didn't want to jump ahead of God AGAIN, so I waited.
Anyways, long story short, I thought about the lady and her course for at least a month or two and researched and prayed and just begged God to show me if this was what He had for me to do in this season of life - making music as a stay at home mom and getting it to the world through the internet.
And about a month ago, I knew He was saying, "Yes!" He showed me that THIS is what I've been waiting a year to find! THIS is the solution He has for our family to have financial abundance! And THIS is the way He wants me to pursue my calling of music as a stay at home mom! Who would have ever thought in a MILLION YEARS that something like this would even be possible?! But it's true... This is the road He has for me and I'm running down it as fast as I can!
So less than a month ago, I signed up for the course! And I kid you not... since then, I have finished 11 songs from that season of "100 days of creating", sent them out to a friend from college who helped me edit some of them and figure out what instruments I needed to add to record them, got in touch with a guy who is going to help me make some initial recordings of my songs and who gave my information to another guy who owns a studio in Lakeland, and the studio guy called me the same exact day to set up a meeting to go decide if we'd be a good fit. And I met with him AT HIS STUDIO two days ago and nailed out a lot of the details of what recording will look like and, if all goes well, it is likely I'll be starting the recording process in the next month or two!!!!
WHAT IS LIFE?!?!?!!? lol! :D
God is so so good... He's walking me through this process so well and showing me the path I need to take to follow Him.
And it is more exciting than I could have dreamed.
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