“For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on His shoulders. And He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. “Isaiah 9:6

A truly life-changing experience that I acquired was going to Romania twice on mission trips. The church in Oradea needed help as they were building a new church and we went to help physically do some work on the church and to do some ministry there. We met some very wonderful Romanian people and enjoyed the beauty of some of the buildings there. People all over the world are very similar with their needs, wants and desires and life experiences . Of course the culture is different, the language, the customs- but doing a mission trip may open up your eyes to how much we have in common with people all over the world. My heart went out to the needs of the children in that city. We visited a children’s hospital, and children’s residential agency. Conditions were not same as America. Most important, people need to hear about Jesus all over the world, which was the focus for all who went. I was so glad I went. This is missions week,(at my church) thought I would share my own encouraging word about how rewarding it is.

Many of us are searching for identity throughout our entire life’s journey, it is a foundational part of what makes us human. Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper :” A Theory of Human Motivation”(Journal of Psychological Review). In his paper, he proposed a hierarchy of human needs which were broken down :1. Basic needs,2. Psychological needs, and 3.Self-fullfillment or self-actualization. Basic needs are described as physiological needs such as food, water, warmth, and rest. Also in the list of basic needs includes security and safety. Under psychological needs, we see esteem needs: prestige, feeling of accomplishment. Belongingness and love needs, ie intimate relationships, friends. The self-fulfillment needs, includes: self-actualisation-achieving one’s full potential, including creative activities. This hierarchy is a main base in knowing how effort and motivation are correlated when discussing human behavior. Maslow’s contention was that each of these individual levels contains a certain amount of internal sensation that must be met in order for an individual to complete their hierarchy- ultimately final goal is to reach self-actualisation. Present scholars believe that these levels of achievement overlap quite a bit and throughout our lives , which means the lower levels may take precedence back over the other levels at any point in time. Hardships, difficulties and many trials present these types of circumstances as we journey through toward fulfillment. What makes some people give up the effort, and others sink their teeth in the goal to reach self -fulfillment-no matter what diversions, what unfortunate circumstances? In my own personal story, I had no role model to look up to, no clear reason to believe that I may ever climb out of the bucket I was in, nor did I have a clue what I was reaching for. I am sure this is a familiar story to others. There is an old saying” There are no atheists in foxholes”. In my story , God saved my life from a traumatic assault which took the life of my first-born child, I too; almost died during this assault. Some may say , there is no God that should allow such a thing to happen, (there were family members who did say these exact words.) But I knew different, I knew that if it was not for God, answering my plea to help me, to let me live, I would not be here today writing this to you. Did my feelings get in the way of my choices, and what was right or wrong? Over the years, yes many times. We are always searching for fulfillment of who we are , always searching through each hierarchy level, floundering between levels at times, but always reaching for who we are. My faith in God has kept me stable in my quest- though feelings are hurt, understanding those pains that cause those feelings is more important , my faith has helped me grow more and more each day, if we succumb to our feelings we will always be in a state of instability. I know that I was not alone that day when the attacker let me go to. I lived to speak about that day. I thank God for saving me. Write about your feelings, get to the bottom of why you feel the way you do, learn to understand your feelings and learn to heal and grow. Give all your pain, and all your grief to God, He will also help you grow past hurtful moments in your life.

When my mother was much younger maybe in her 60’s I used to notice her busy doing a project, then all of a sudden a song would come on the radio. Her stoic feet would begin to tap, her backside would sway and before long , she would break into a joyous dance. Music can gives us chills, make us cry and sooth our hearts. Studies done at the University of London by Nidhya Logeswaran and Joydeep Bhattacharya proved that music may make us see visual images differently, happy music was shown to cause people to view visual images as happier, and sad music wrote a visual story of a sadder nature. A quote from their study, ” music is exquisitely emotionally evocative”- almost as if music contains some distinctly human elements. Music repatriation goes back to an early “seventeenth century usage applied to living bodies. Repatriation itself is derived from Latin which means” back to one’s fatherland”.(Gunderson, F, and Woods, B. “Handbook of Musical Repatriation”.

What is a human element of music? One is our expressive speech, which may be just as abstract as the diversity of language throughout different cultures. However, most of the emotion of language is in the meaning which is different from culture to culture. Knowing how much my mom loved music , she would have most likely kicked up her feet to drums from any country. I love the hit Linda Ronstadt recorded, Different Drummer. The first line says “You and I travel to the beat of a different drum, Ah can’t you tell by the way I run every time you make eyes at me……” We may not all celebrate music in the same language or with the same emotions, but music expresses something human that each of us may find refreshing in many different ways. This post is dedicated to my mother who was the reason music is in our family.