Getting Ready

I began piano lessons at the age of eight from a Benedictine Nun named Sister Angela and I hated practicing as most. But what I did enjoy was playing MY songs. I started to compose music and I even had one of my pieces of music entered into a contest of young composers when I was about nine. When I entered my later teens I did get to play for a few weddings and even wrote a song for my friends wedding, but it was painful to play in public as I was much to shy.
After I became a christian I was asked if I would help out with a ministry of bringing music and church to those with special needs, and this seemed like something that I could do, so off I went with my guitar. I learned the old church songs that they preferred and all of us would sing at the top of our lungs and there was rarely a dry eye. It was at that time I realized that when someone is paralyzed from the neck down they cant use kleenex as others, so I had the added job of going from chair to chair to dry their eyes and blow their noses. We definately had church!!
I found that playing the piano was one of the most theraputic things I could do when I was upset. While others would mouth off, I didnt, I would get on my piano and play and play until all of that energy was gone and I'd feel better. So when my kids were little, and they were off to bed I would play, sometimes for hours. They fell asleep to music. As the years went by I had more and more pieces of music and many of these songs came out of difficulties that I was going through at the time. Some had words, others didnt. But each one was very special to me. I could hear parts in my head and sometimes I would even awake with a melody and voices and I would run down to my piano and get it on paper before I would forget.
Most of these songs were started but never finished until I got through whatever situation I was going through at the time. Sometimes it would be months or years before I had finished the song. I have had and still do have many pieces of songs on pieces of paper or napkins or whatever I had close by at the time.
Over the years I began to believe that God was giving me the music and my confidence in Him grew and I played a little more in front of people and got over the fear, I always wondered what all the music was for, as it got me through difficult times and comforted me in the darkest hours, and I wondered if it would do the same for others.
So for these last few months, I have been gathering the pieces of paper together and making it ready to have my music recorded. God told me the time is now. I am going to an old Catholic church which has been converted to a recording studio. Interesting enough, this church was a church that I worshipped at when I was twenty. I remember loving it because of the acoustics. Three people could sing and the whole place was full of music. And pardon me for saying but you know how Catholics are? they usually dont sing very loud because their afraid of being heard, but it didnt matter one bit in this church. Maybe they should build more like it. lol. And by the way, didnt God say, Make a Joyful Noise? So, Im going to make a joyful noise of praise almost thirty years later and I dont care who hears me.