Senior year was the best of my college years. Those eight months helped me discover gifts, talents and interests that could map out the course of my life. But what those eight months couldn’t do was help me forget the previous nearly eight years leading up to them. Eight years of depression and a lifetime of negative self-talk that couldn’t be erased by eight months of bright-eyed dreaming. And so, instead of courageously embarking on a whirlwind journey in the Christian music business, fear made me settle for a secretary position at a local seminary.
Fear stifles our thinking and actions. It creates indecisiveness that results in stagnation. I have known talented people who procrastinate indefinitely rather than risk failure. Lost opportunities cause erosion of confidence, and the downward spiral begins.
– Charles Stanley
I tried to hang onto the dream for as long as I could. I promoted many Christian concerts at local venues for several years after. I enjoyed every minute of meeting Christian artists and bringing them to New England where Christian music was slowly gaining ground. I even contemplated my own Christian music production company or radio station, even managed to rally some local support, but ultimately, I gave up. It was more painful than productive to try to hang onto a seemingly impossible vision.
I’ve seen Bebo perform in at least a dozen states over the years. Each time we’d catch up on our lives—our travels, our weddings, his two sons, my two daughters, and all the avenues God has taken us since we first met. But each time I left a little sad. His world in Christian music was the life I didn’t live. Didn’t have the guts for. Didn’t but envy a little too often. God only knows what I missed out on.
Next month I’ll see Bebo one last time before he retires from Christian music. Turns out, maybe he was thinking the same about my life. Maybe he envied my freedom or my opportunity to be a foreign missionary for a time. Maybe he’s tired of missing out on his children growing up while he travels. He often wrote about a life he didn’t live where “the trees [stood] still.”
But maybe, we all wonder what might have been, what life could be, what we would do if we didn’t base our decisions on fear. All I know is that I’m tired of leaving our meetings with sadness. This time I want to leave with joy—joy that Bebo is living a full life, whether he be singing or touring or something else; joy that I’m living a full life as a wife and mother; joy that that we are both beginning another new adventure in our lives with only hints of what is coming next; joy that God is with us both as we move past any remaining fears to do what God has placed in our hearts to do.
“Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is freedom.” – Marilyn Ferguson
The vision that God has given me for my future includes every freedom there is: freedom from financial burdens, freedom to enjoy family and friends, freedom to be everything God created me to be, freedom to stand on top of and conquer my fears in time to enjoy every ounce of life and breath that I have. All I have to do is believe in this vision, and I trust that the Lord will bring it to pass. I can only hope as much for Bebo.
The Art of Choosing True Life 