Extremes Are Never Good

This particular topic is one that Aaron and I have commented on fairly frequently and it hit home with me again yesterday. When I was younger it was much easier to view the world in black and white - extremes only...then as I got older, went to college, met a fantastic cornucopia (that's right - I used it!) of people who challenged my worldviews - things shifted into shades of gray. I shied away from those extreme black and whites, afraid of becoming an extremist, someone unable to accept and adapt to new ideas.

Now I find myself in a new phase of life...in many ways...but now I think I am starting to come back from that foggy gray concept of the world and blending it with that over-zealous black and white concept of my youth. What was the conduit for this revelation? Oddly enough a new Baltimore-based Christian music station.

Now that I've probably confused you, let me explain...

If you've read any of my previous blogs, you know that I've been struggling with feelings of anxiety, nervousness and a general unfounded discontent that grips me from time to time. I also have the blessing of being a child of God and have re-kindled my relationship with Him and He is faithfully and ever so patiently revealing Himself to me daily. Yesterday I was driving home in rush hour traffic through Baltimore (the city that doesn't know how to plow or fix potholes) and I felt that all to familiar wave of unfounded anxiety crash in my stomach. As an attempt to distract myself, I began to scan through radio stations (something I never do since I usually listen to my iPod in the car). The scanner stopped on 95.1 and the most incredible lyrics poured out of the speakers into my car:

We pour out our miseries
God just hears a melody
Beautiful the mess we are
The honest cries of breaking hearts
Are better than a Hallelujah.

I almost burst into grateful tears right there on 295. God is amazing and I am slowly realizing the myriad of ways He can reveal His presence to me, and now...music! I've been an extremist when it comes to Christian music since college...and in the "no Christian music allowed" direction. I was convinced it was lame, annoying and didn't have a place in my regularly-listened-to rotation. Now I plan on integrating Christian music into the library of fantastic tuneage I have roaring in my ears every day. Not JUST Christian music and not JUST "secular" music...but a happy and fulfilling blend of the two.

Here's to opening my mind and my ears to new possibilities, even ones as seemingly insignificant as the possibility that Christian music has a place on my car stereo's radio dial.