No, not the sweet relief of finally reaching a bathroom after a long road trip, but the sweet relief of having a plan. I can't get anything done without a game plan. My room is full of sticky notes with to-do lists and reminders of how many pages of "The Bluest Eye" or AP Biology I have to read today. They are my much needed crutch, and until I devise my plans, I am trying to figure out what I have to do and feeling quite helpless.
When I was in seventh grade, I decided I was going to be a doctor when I grew up, and I made a plan. That plan was happily being followed, until I realized one day I didn't know why I was following it. This happened about a year ago, and ever since, I've been scrambling around trying to find some new career that I can hold on to. But that's hard to do when your three favorite things are music, writing, and science, and you also enjoy tutoring. And since I'm not crazy enough to quadruple major and become a Professor of Writing Theses on Musicology, I was trying to pick. This wasn't going very well for me. So here I am, in the middle of my junior year, with Judgement Day coming soon, and I would have to pick a side. Pick a major. Pick a college. It was indeed going to be the end of the world.
But get this. My relief was soon to arrive. This is how it happened, no exaggeration. I came home from school on Thursday thoroughly stressed after being told I needed to pick a major and a college. I came home, and to calm myself down, I sat down to pray and let God take care of things for me. He follows through pretty consistently, so I figured it'd be a good idea to take up one of the biggest decisions of my life with the Big Guy. So I told him all about my conflict, the majors I was thinking about, the schools I was interested in, and pleaded that He would lead me into a good and happy life and to a career where I can use all the talents I've been given and give them back.
Then this morning I was chatting with my dad about my future, a popular conversation lately, and we had an argument. Here's the gist: he wants me to be a doctor, I don't know I want, but I know I want to do something with music. And he's scared of me being a bar singer the rest of my life. I go into my room, and start cleaning it up for the day. Ever since I had the stomach flu New Year's Eve, I have been meticulously neat. I think it's because I was so disgusted with my sickness, I wanted to cleanse everything. And keep it that way. So because I'm a stickler about clear counters now, I moved my prom dress catalog on my desk into the magazine rack in my living room. The magazine I pushed aside to put the catalog in front of was TIME Magazine, the Alternative Medicine addition. I picked it out, thinking of my English teacher who would be happy to hear I read something this weekend as scholarly as TIME. I read a whole article on placebos, took notes, and flipped the page.
This is what I see: The Sound of Healing. I read the article, and it's all about this growing field of medicine called Music Therapy. They have found that by playing music to patients, they have rehabilitated much quicker and with less pain. This can benefit a wide range of patients, from Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, to cancer, to depression. All these neuroscientists are finding physiological links between the brain, the immune system, and music, which explains the amazing results they see. It gets complicated, and there's a lot more to it than that, but the whole time I was reading it, I could see myself doing that. I was amazed. I kept saying, "This is insane, this is insane!" My medical mind was satisfied and intrigued, my musical heart was upbeat and perky, and my soul took a huge sigh of relief. I knew immediately this is where my life should be going.
I took the article out to my dad, and said, "Look, we can both get what we want." I read it to him, he was equally amazed by all the results found and amazing things music therapists have achieved. He was even more thrilled when he heard lots of colleges have that major, and that the field is young, so there aren't a lot of music therapists out there yet, and that the practice is booming. I would be on the cutting edge, and in high demand out of college.
This all happened two days after I'd prayed about it. It took God two days to figure out what had taken me over a year of searching. And now I can finally relax and walk steady on my path.
Ah, sweet relief,
~Kat
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