And The Music Plays On

“We all have a song that somehow stamped our lives

Takes us to another place and time…”

-Kenny Chesney, “I Go Back”

It was July of 2004 and I was in a hotel room watching VH1 with friends in Panama City Beach, FL. We had come all the way from West Monroe, LA for a youth camp at the beach. I had gone to camp the past summer in Tennessee and loved it. Yet, we had been there a few days already and it just wasn’t having the same allure as before.

What I do remember very clearly, out of all the bad that happened that camp in FL, was an R. Kelly video that we watched called “U Saved Me.” It was R.Kelly’s testimony of how God had saved and redeemed him from his sin and reckless ways. That video, however, was one of the last ones we watched before our youth minister came in and told us to stop watching TV.

That song was one of the few highlights from that camp. For it was during camp that week that the beginning seeds of paranoia and schizophrenia began to take root in my life. And it was that following March in 2005 when I was officially diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Through all the ups and downs over those years, I clung tightly to my CDs and the songs I heard on the radio. When I got an iPod for the first time, I listened to it so much that I sometimes slept on top of it at night.

With all the music I listened to and the movies I watched, I became a living database or encyclopedia of useless information. I even would surprise myself at the songs and movies I could remember at an instant.

That is why, when I heard that R. Kelly song again after so many years on a radio at the Come Let’s Dance base camp in Uganda four years ago, I shouted for joy. I remembered the song! And while, I could not remember all the words, I sang and lip-synced my way through the song, while Mama Julie talked with a friend and told me to keep singing until the song was over.

In conclusion, isn’t that what we should all do? The Lord orchestrates the music and story of our lives. And even when we enter hard times, we should not forget to praise Him and sing along, knowing He will carry us through, until the very last notes of our time on earth are played by His mighty hands.

Thank you for reading. I love each and every one of you so much.

Until Next Time,

Jacobo