Psalm 15 - Vacant Chair

I was sitting in church last week and two rows in front of me I saw my past. No, I wasn’t delusional. I wasn’t hallucinating. I saw five girls, five young girls, all in their early to mid twenties, all part of our worship community at Open Door. They are being given the opportunity to express and use their gifts in music. They sing…beautifully. Their hearts are directed towards expressing their love to God through worship of Him. The vehicle that facilitates that for them is their voices. I watched as they enjoyed worshipping Him together. They purposed to be there to worship Him and they purposed to be together to worship Him. That was once me and that was once my friends. There was a bitter sweetness in realizing that there no longer was anyone next to me, figuratively or literally. The chairs on either side of me sat vacant…available. Things change. Passions change. People move on. It is good and right that the next generation have the opportunities that we/I have had. I realized that by the age of the youngest of them, I had already been in a band for probably 4-5 years. My season in the band ended by age 26. That is still young. My journey as a Mom started then and my music took a backseat for the duration of my “Mom” years. I have had many years of pursuing my heart and passion and expression of music through singing on the worship team in a supporting role. Through these years I have seen my peers gradually move on. I am not sure to what always. When I was little I used to think that when I grew up that I would “grow into” what I thought was adult music and that is how things changed and moved on. At some point I would be listening to Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, you know the music that “big people” listened to. That never happened. My music grew with me. In fact, my music keeps evolving. Sometimes I feel like I am a displaced person because I don’t continually tune into the “oldies” station or “classics”. I enjoy the freshness of music as it evolves. I want to believe that the best is really yet to come for me. Moving on implies that you are moving TO something else. I don’t want to be stagnant and I don’t want to live in the past and I definitely want to give opportunity to the next generation to pursue their passions. I am still waiting for what that something else looks like for me. I do know that it doesn’t mean that I have to sit around reminiscing about the past, singing songs considered “classics” or “oldies but goodies”, ordering from the senior’s menu, and becoming a spectator in life. I just don’t know yet what it does mean. In the meantime I will trust that the chairs beside me won’t remain vacant forever.