The Other Voices

Not sure when this really started, but I have other voices in my head, too. I usually have a song playing in my mind as soon as I wake up. 

It isn't from the radio. I'm awake long before the alarm sounds. The alarm is for the cats, really, to let them know this is the time you can expect Mom to get up and stay up. 

The song is usually what could be considered Christian contemporary, something I heard on Klove, Family Life Radio or American Family Radio's morning show (they're mostly talk, now). Or cable has a contemporary Christian channel, that would be more rightly named The TobyMac Channel. 

No offense to Toby. Prolific is a lucrative thing. 

So, I have this one voice that likes to talk about the bad, the worse and the unthinkable, a soloist or choir singing something about God, and my own nonsense chattering away all at the same time. It's a miracle I can hear anything else. 

TT: Yet I hear everything else. I can hear earthworms moving through the grass at night from my porch. 

I don't know if God gives me the songs or if it's a side-effect of my quirky depression-soaked synapses. There are a number of songs that have helped center me during an episode. Even If by MercyMe, Abide with Me by Matt Maher, Worn by Tenth Avenue North, Into the Sea by Tasha Layton, Truth I'm Standing On by Leanna Crawford, Out of My Hands by Jeremy Camp. Praise God Christian songwriters are not immune from the darker emotions. 

Don't get me wrong. Upbeat praise music is helpful, too, but the Psalms are darkness of human experience and the eternal light and love of God. When I'm in the darkness, I can't feel the light. I need to know someone else was there and came out of it, not that they've never walked that valley. That's hope. To know other people made it out alive. 

Keep the faith.