Still Singing
A few Sundays ago, I had the opportunity to lead the music at the church where I work part-time. This used to be a weekly routine for me. I’ve been playing and singing in church since I was very young and spent nearly 15 years working in churches as a music director. These days, my role is technical director, so my focus is on audio, video, and lighting. But I’m still fortunate to be able to get out of the tech booth to pick up an instrument or microphone from time to time, and that usually includes giving our music director a midsummer week off.
It was on one of those Sundays just about a year ago that I finally had to acknowledge that something was seriously wrong with my voice. I had been struggling with intermittently losing my voice for several months and had written it off to my long-running allergy issues. But that morning in rehearsal, I found that I simply couldn’t produce the sounds that I expected. Singing at all was unusually difficult, and some notes seemed to just be missing. Fortunately, we have a fantastic team of singers who supported me and carried the day. I stood on the platform strumming my guitar, sang what I could, and made mental plans to get to a doctor.
That initial urgent care visit led to an ENT referral and several other specialist visits, which eventually brought two diagnoses: severe acid reflux and a benign (but physically problematic) growth on my right vocal cord. Surgery was going to be the solution, at least for the second issue.
The surgery was scheduled for October. It was a routine, outpatient procedure, but as someone who has been singing my entire life, I still found the idea unnerving. The night before the surgery, I sat down at the choir room piano at church and recorded voice memos of myself croaking out a couple of favorite songs, just in case.
Fortunately, everything went smoothly. Two weeks of near-total vocal rest was exactly as difficult to maintain as expected, but I recovered well and got back to “normal” pretty quickly. Finding the right treatment for my reflux issues is a continuing challenge, and I have days that are worse than others (like today), but my voice doesn’t catch in conversation anymore and I’m singing pretty well. 9 months after surgery, I don’t think about it too much. That’s why I was caught a bit off guard by my emotional response when I stepped up to the microphone that recent Sunday morning.
There I was, on the same platform, with the same team, doing the same thing that had been such a red flag a year earlier. My voice is still not as strong or flexible as I would like it to be, and not everything feels exactly the same as it did pre-surgery, but I was able to lead the team and congregation through the morning’s songs without discomfort or embarrassment. In the midst of it, I found myself overwhelmed with gratitude: for the gift of a voice and still being able to use it, for excellent medical professionals, for all of the wonderful musicians I’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with, and for the simple chance to do it one more time.
Always good to be reminded that nothing is guaranteed, and everything good is a gift.
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