originally posted January 2018
It is a misconception that simply because my dad is a pilot, I must like flying. Nothing could be further from the truth. (Sorry dad.)
To qualify, I enjoy an airport. I've been to many around the world. Nothing like a colorful dose of assorted strangers to remind you how wonderfully weird we all are. Healthy human bean varieties.
I love the glamor of suits and the click of high heels and overhearing different languages and dads with baby slings and families of five trying to stay in tight formation and the hum of rolling wheels and and really love constantly suppressing the nagging suspicion that my flight has been cancelled or delayed or I've been pushed to the very back row of the plane.
I like getting my passport stamped--if they actually decide to stamp it when they're supposed to. (My New Zealand trip this past summer resulted in zero new stamps. Disappointed.)
And I adore landing...surviving a flight? A+. And who can't help but perk up at the crinkling of little pretzel packs being passed out at the front of the plane.
But please please please someone knock me unconscious before take-off.
If I don't manage to close my eyes and convince my mind of a reality in which I never actually left the ground, where Newtons remains at a cozy constant and pressure doesn't pump my brain like a stress ball, the rest of the flight will be spent in an effort of trying to maintain equilibrium. The Take-Off Mindset is crucial - if I have the displeasure of being awake for it. (This post is sponsored by Dramamine, my drug of choice since childhood.)
Last year I traveled a silly 34,000 something miles just adding together all the routes I took from Charlottesville to Dallas to Aukland to Christchurch to Sydney to LAX to Norfolk to New Jersey to Denver to Austin. On Wednesday, I start my flight count for 2018. Last year there were four.
But this first trip for 2018 is special, because I'm leaving on a jet plane with a one-way ticket.
********************************
In November 2016, a friend of mine approached me with the idea for a missions trip he was trying to organize for our church. Having lived overseas for 8 years as a kid, I didn't need much convincing on why international travel would be worth it especially if its for the Lord.
My heart had already said "yes" before the location was announced at the official interest meeting: I was going to New Zealand.
Even though I was nearly there in fulfilling my Jazz degree, I was looking unsure and a little pessimistic at the future, of how exactly I would survive in the real world economy.
As an alternative to music, I seriously considered the idea of full-time campus mission work, seeking to encounter young adults at the most crucial point in their lives with the love of God. And it would mean sorta giving up my passion in order to serve the Lord, which seemed perfectly Christian from what I'd been taught. (How much I have had to unlearn!)
Surviving simply through musical means felt (might always feel) a little too good to be true. By the time graduation rolled around, the Lord had given me three things to look to Him for.
1. Community
2. Opportunity
3. Explicit Invitation
I couldn't visualize departing from my family for some big hot city simply to gain wider exposure, despite suggestions from a few counselors. I just knew I wanted the day to day to be filled with greater purpose.
I committed to that trip as much to share the Gospel with the hungry as much to hear from God personally which direction I ought to take.
So I can't tell you why I'm moving to Austin without starting back in New Zealand. If I hadn't gone there, I wouldn't be going now.
On that trip, of all things, I was performing in front of a bouncy house, on a very nippy day in July (I was on the opposite side of the equator after all) when several friends (campus missionaries from Austin) volunteered, "You need to come down to where we are."
I'm generally a play-it-safe, use-both-hands, grab-a-coaster sort of person, so moving halfway across the country did not strike me like a match immediately.
That playful suggestion became very serious when a different Austinite explicitly invited me to consider being a full-time campus missionary and roll with the crew down there, in the "Music Capital of the World."
Hmm. Community, opportunity, invitation. Oddly specific packaging.
I said yes to the invitation. Mission work, Texas, moving. A month after we landed I leveled my bank account yet again to $0.00 to buy a round-trip plane ticket. All the tips I'd made as a waitress in a month.
A week before going I was totally opposed to the whole plan. Majorly Anti-Texas. Ew. "Nope, not me. Not leaving." The day before my flight, I reconciled to at least humor God and be open to being persuaded MAYBE to go.
I wouldn't expect Him to drag anything across a banner in the sky if I was already predetermined to make my own way without His input.
I showed up to Austin-Bergstrom on a Wednesday, shadowed my missionary friend all of Thursday while hounding the man with questions, playing both the optimistic inquisitor and devil's advocate. He was patient and exhaustively thorough in his answers, and I hated feeling like I had come all this way to waste his time, being intellectually gung-ho but deep down honestly unable to find the heart's resolve to commit. It felt close but still not quite cigar-worthy.
That Thursday evening, our friends took me out to the Elephant Room in downtown Austin, a speakeasy style bar in Austin famed for its live music. They were like, "We're going to this place cuz it's got good jazz," and I was like, "Word, sounds good," cause I had never heard of it before.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
A trombonist named Andre Hayward was fronting the combo. I paid my jazz dues by lingering near the front for a little bit, willing to mark this whirlwind trip with at least an attempt to ask to sit in on a tune.
I eventually gave up the game after a discouraging conversation with one of the sidemen who basically said, "This isn't really one of those jams, and it's not my show, and I'm not going to nudge the bandleader for you, squirt."
I remember rolling my eyes to the ceiling thinking, "Alright Lord, I didn't come here to do this anyways, it's fine. If you are cool with me singing you're going to have to make it happen, cause I'm NOT going to be the diva." And I retreated to the back of the bar.
How wonderful was it, when Andre asked me which song I wanted to do after my table caught him walking out the door and suggested he let me sing. I think it's hilarious that he just believed them, we could have been a tonedeaf party.
My one song lead to another song, and then an invitation to sit it on another show elsewhere that weekend by a gentleman who represented the Austin Jazz Society.
And just lots of hope and laughter and gratitude abounding in my heart that it in fact had been so easy to get up there after all, and I didn't have to embarrass myself by lingering awkwardly at the front.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As it is, I maybe overshare. I could keep my dreams to myself out of self protection because I don't want to be perceived as a fool. But as it stands, I'm going back specifically to pursue a musical career because that whole process - the mission trip buildup, the triple-combo package, the not-quite-but-almost feeling, the well of relief finally singing with Andre - felt like the Lord saying, "I'm ok with this," (kinda like what He said to me my freshman spring of Undergrad. Another story. I've asked him this question a lot.)
I'll tell you what though, that following Monday, I showed up again to the Elephant Room because it was a designated jam session night.
Under hot red lights, after having been barked at by the stressed-out waitress, telling the wrong key to the group (I gave the first chord! Not the same thing!) and in the middle of an invasive piano player, a trombonist soloing in another key, and Chloe singing in an uncomfortably high range just praying to make it work, I had this strange, ironic peace: that this was exactly the sort of ending my larger-than-life trip to Austin needed. It was reality going, "Hello, remember me? You can't expect to always look or feel glamorous. This is sweaty. This is work."
I felt like a true fool that second go on that stage. But it was so worthwhile, because I got to practice all those things you never have to flex when things go well.
Like - Don't freak out. Make it work. Use this to your advantage. Don't let on that your stressed. Don't be a diva. Don't blame other people. LAUGH when it's all over cause you survived.
As I wait to board, I have no idea what I'm getting into, and basically no plans when I get there except to pray and wait and and learn and try and go and just go. I'm the least reliable variable in this plan, not the Lord.
To cope with uncomfortable take-offs, I have to remind myself what is real in order not to be overcome by the momentary changes in environmental factors and internal sensations.
Similarly to how we must operate knowing the Lord's overarching will for our lives, lest we get sucked into what the world tells us we ought to strive for or operate under. If I purpose to be successful to the point that it costs me peace, joy, and humility, then I'm successfully doing His way wrong.
I'm aware of all of this, but I don't think I'm beyond err. Whatever path He establishes, I'm going to do my best to just let it happen and not force His hand.
I obviously want to do well. I obviously want to sing. I'm expecting a lot from God, because I don't believe in coincidences, and I know He is good, so it is just like Him to allow me have that thing that feels too good to be true. That is like, trademark God.
But I know I have to keep my priorities in order. The next few months should be interesting.
I'm grateful for the community I am walking into, the family I'm leaving behind, the friends in New Zealand, my church's priority on reaching the lost, my gracious host family, the chance to learn more and grow this slippery musical craft, my past mentors, and the explicit invitation. He gave me everything I was looking for, and then some.
I just have to get myself through the take-off.