Behind The Fog He Has On Display
~written by Julia Scott
After a friend joked about putting a nursery rhyme to thrash metal, about two years ago, I continued to elaborate creating the first song publicly shared. I had played around with writing or assembling things like parodies, mashups, and cross-genre covers in the few years prior to that. Being part of an online community, the casual writings in metaphors started to manifest. It was within that community that the ability to “paint pictures with words” was expressed and encouraged by others.
Slowly, I have started to embrace the talent that was never before explored. My childhood was not the worse, but far from the best. One thing that was absent from my life was believing that Christ was there. The household in which I was raised was a true atheist environment, possibly worse, where religion was viewed as ignorance. Perspectives taught on many parts of life were filled with negativity. I grew to be dismissive of God’s presence; however, I valued the positive impact that faith had for others.
My entire life has been in the Lansing area, going to inner city schools and spending summer at community centers whenever possible. In 2008 I got married, had my amazingly talented daughter shortly afterwards and my mini-me son just over a year later. At that same time, I managed to complete bachelor degree at Michigan State.
Even though I started working in the small business accounting field at 19, I was able to stop working for a couple years while finishing school and starting a family. When my son was a few months old, I returned to the workforce, proudly accepting the label of “tax geek”. Leaving the industry in 2016 was not what I wanted at the time, my career was going great. My family had needs that an [often over] full-time job could not be balanced with. It was decided that I would take on the job of homeschooling my 2nd grade son, which accommodated the half-day Autism program that he started later that year. Ultimately, it was a blessing in disguise because I likely would not have discovered writing.
While my level of spirituality ranked Christ in the same category of the tooth fairy or Easter bunny, I wanted my children to believe. When they were infants, I joined a small church with my friend for my kids. Unlike the foundation set for me, I wanted them to have the strength I saw in people of faith for when life gets chaotic. I would rather have them fall onto roots of hope than in the quicksand of hate. This choice of going to church was made several years before actually believing in Christ. What I did believe was that there is goodness and light in the world, not the sad darkness that was often pointed out when I was young.
Switching to Christian music stations was another step taken on my journey; it was done to feed my kids positive music, rather than the things they started to sing when coming home from school. A few months later, I decided to check out some of the larger local churches with a larger community for both kids and adults, as well as the more contemporary Christian music that they were listening to.
It had been a while since we attended church and challenges in life were starting to pile up. I started to understand some of the stresses my mom dealt with, having a brother with Aspergers. I willingly escaped to work insane hours, adjusted medication so that the challenges of being a Narcoleptic (genetic sleep disorder) could be avoided, and ultimately learned just how bad mismanaged Chron’s can be. Even though I started to make little steps to make put myself in a more manageable place, I ultimately crumbled apart. That summer, I was ready to leave everything and almost did. There are a few songs about all of this, some of them shared with only a few. Many things seemed to break apart that summer of 2015; however, all of that cracked open the walls put up to where I was willing to listen.
One little thing that brought a transient peace was the music, especially at the service itself, so I decided to play piano again. Shortly before kids were born, I purchased an electric piano,, but that was tucked away in a spare bedroom for many years. It wasn’t played much in the pre-kid time because I easily got frustrated that it was not at where I left off about years before. In high-school, I started to play piano for an elective, quickly moving through the material and making it through the level 3 book by the end of 1st semester. While I could read music, my playing while reading [music] was slow. The songs learned were instead memorized.
I was a socially awkward kid, but always tried to be social. There are many individuals from many different groups that I interacted with, not really being a core member of the various cliques. I was not allowed to hang out with people outside of the school or community center setting, so she joined sports teams, Academic Decathlon, and the school’s musical productions. I was really nervous, mostly avoiding a dominant role out of the fear of criticism at home for being imperfect. I played accompaniment for choir only at the state competition.
I see value in all people and like to embrace the views experienced on their different paths. There are many times that seeds of faith were planted when our paths came together. Some just crossed for a moment and some merged into life for many seasons. There was still the wall established as a child as to the validity of God. Many of those people will have no idea of the impact that they made in my life, just as there are likely many that I might never know my actions nudged them towards a lighter world.
While I have an appreciation for scripture now, those being pushy, especially reciting verse after verse, would be pushed away when I was a non-believer. Even now, I believes that quoting the Bible from the mind are often empty words. It is those displaying the message through their actions and those speaking the Word from their heart that has the most power.
There are verses integrated into my songs or the connection is noted when reflecting on the song. With that first casual challenge, which turned into a full song, I quickly felt the correlation between the nursery rhyme choice and Jeremiah 29:11. When writing it, I consciously left out direct references but emphasized specific words that have double meanings. This allowed the expanded version of Itsy Bitsy Spider to share God’s message without repeating the specific words in scripture. It also allowed my to share it at my daughters school (she continued going to public school) and with non-believers. Terminology didn’t stand in the path, allowing more opportunity for people to step towards the gate.
John 20, the visit to the tomb, actually holds a deeper meaning to me than most. One of the first songs written was to explain the Greek words for “he saw”. This was done as a ballad and a rap. I desire to know God, and this goes through the different types of seeing and hearing:
- Observe/witness
- Take notice and examine
- Understand
“I want to see, want to hear
Want a reminder You are near
Can a no-one like me
See what You show?
I’m told I am worthy, help me to know”
The whole writing process opened up many doors to understanding life. I AM able to process past experiences, often rewriting them with Jesus. One song recently written (hope to find a right fit for someone to sing it) is “Rewrite The Rough Draft.” It is a song about picturing experiences with Jesus in the mix, even from times in the past as a non-believer.
The songs often come back to speak to myself at another moment. Music has a way of sticking around. I don’t seek to become rich and famous. I only pray to be one of God’s hands where something shared will also speak to someone else.
Click here to check out some of the projects I’ve been working on.
The End… or Beginning.
~written by Julia Scott
