Out with the Old, In with the New

Recently, I've been struggling with a lot of stuff. Some pretty major emotional up and downs and changes. And finally, finally, today, I kind of just thought through things and decided that I really, really needed to get out of this rut that I've been digging myself into for years. I needed to turn around and give everything to God and let Him handle it. I also realized that part of the reason I was having such serious emotional issues, was because of my music. I'm a Christian, yes, but that doesn't mean that I only listen to Christian music. I've come to realize that little by little I had removed the majority of my Christian music from my MP3 player to make room for newer non-Christian music I had either heard our found. As I thought about it today, I realized that at least 3/4 of my music was not Christian, and about 1/2 of it was not edifying or really good in any way. I realized that I had started to subtly move towards some edgier music. Nothing explicit, but maybe a curse word here or there or a mild suggestion. But it was affecting me, and not in a good way.

I'm very sensitive to music. In one second, it can wake me up, make me want to fall asleep, make me happy, or throw me into depression. And a lot of the music I'd been listening to recently was either kind of edgy because it was just really upbeat and made me feel better or it was really depressing and just made me wallow in my own sadness and problems and what-not.

So, basically, I figured all this out and thought all this out, while I was out, of all things, mowing this afternoon. I always listen to my music when I'm mowing because there's nothing else to do. You have to steer the thing so instead of just listening to it's thunderous roar, I put in my earphones and listen to my music. So I started listening and it went from one really upbeat song to one really depressing song that I could just totally relate to. Naturally, I started feeling depressed, so I started switching through songs till I came to this one. It's called I Will Carry You by Clay Aiken. Now I don't know if this is a Christian song, but I always take it as one because it fits so perfectly with what God does for us. And as I listened to this song, I decided that I needed to give everything up and give it all to God. I also realized that the song I had been listening to previously was just making me feel even more sorry for myself, it was making me dwell even more on what was bothering me, etc. And that's when I realized that I needed to make a major change.

So the first thing I figured I needed to do, was pray, which I did, sitting on a noisy tractor, mowing the grass, I prayed asking God to turn my life around so that I could serve Him and get my life back on track. I also prayed that He would give me the strength to make certain changes. The next thing was to get rid of the non-Christian music on my MP3 player. Now, I'll admit, I did not get rid of every single non-Christian song on my MP3 player. I still have a few on there, but the majority is now Christian music and the non-Christian songs that are on there are ones that won't negatively effect me and for the most part are just kind of fun and uplifting. And I left on my classical music cause it's just really pretty and I like to listen to it occasionally.

I know there are other changes that need to be made, like getting back into reading my Bible everyday, re-starting my prayer journal, etc. But this is my start and I keep praying that God will see me the rest of the way through and I know He will.