The End of a Chapter

After 14 years of studying music and 32 years of being paid as a musician, I am coming to the end of my music career. This decision has been something I have struggled with for almost 3 years. And now, as I come to the end, the emotional strain seems to be no less difficult.

About 6 years ago I was diagnosed with asthma after a couple years of continuing respiratory illnesses. Even if I felt fine, I noticed that there was physical pain when I played my trumpet. I also would become exhausted after leading the three morning worship services. This exhaustion would last for days just in time for me to begin rehearsals for the next Sunday's services. Those would leave me physically spent as well and I would generally recover just in time for Sunday mornings.

It took the doctors more than a year to diagnose me because the spirometer tests showed that I was breathing at about 90-95% of capacity, which is normal. But I knew that the tightness in my lungs and the exhaustion was not in my head. I finally explained to one of the doctors that as a singer I knew how to control my breathing and could really push the air out. After I explained how I had popped the lung on the CPR dolls, twice, without trying, they started to understand that my capacity needed to be adjusted up.

After testing by specialists in multiple fields, I started asking the doctors if moving to another location would help. The answer was devastating to me. No. The type of asthma that I had was not something that would be changed by location.

As a musician, I am a very emotional person. But as a person, I am not publicly emotional. This journey has been emotionally overwhelming for me. If I had lost an arm or a leg, friends might understand my grief, yet no one can see a damaged lung. I have fought the intoxicating desire to simply wallow in my grief. There have been many times that I have had to force myself just to get out of bed in the mornings.

On November 23rd I led my last worship service. I was an emotional wreck, even though nobody around me would have known. I fought back the tears as I stood beside our praise team at the end of the service. But there was no time for tears because I had to get the stage set for the next service.

I have done my best to avoid conversations with others about how I feel. I feel more than I can express. Besides, I really don't like to talk about my feelings. Face to face I avoid feelings. I was taught that you don't air your dirty laundry in public. We didn't do all of that sharing emotions and stuff. That was for wimps. Crying was not something that big boys did.

But here I am, facing the end of something that has been a major part of my life for more than 40 years, and I feel like crying. I feel like wallowing in my grief. But my grief is helping me to be more sensitive to other ministers who are struggling with loss. Friends who have had to leave the ministry for one reason or another. I understand the pain they are experiencing.

As a minister, called by God, I have lived my life with faith that God would take care of me. But I had to go through my season of confusion and doubt as I suffered silently with pain, exhaustion, and even fear. How could God take away the very thing that allowed me to serve Him in music ministry? What would I do next? All of my training had been in this field, I thought.

I asked God to release me from ministry so that I could find another career that would not cause physical pain and suffering. God clearly told me that I had surrendered to Him for a lifetime, not just for a season. I joked that ministry was somewhat like the mob, you could never get out. But I knew without a doubt that if God was not going to release me, then He would lead me to something new or heal my disability.

The end of my music career does not mean the end of my ministry. It took me 2 years to understand this, but God had been preparing me for a much longer time to enter into a new and exciting ministry as a church planter. I will still mourn the loss, but I can rest in the assurance that God had a plan. This is just the end of a chapter in my life.