If you are anything like me, you get those moments where sometimes you just wonder about the most interesting and most beautiful parts of life and you tend to question why you were ever so lucky to have stumbled onto something so beautiful. That beautiful part of life for me is music. Late at night, I sit in bed and I listen to music through my headphones and I just think to myself, "music may quite possibly be the closest thing we will ever have to magic in this world." Music connects with so many people and brings so many people together who would never have known each other otherwise. Music heals. Music is able to do so many incredulous things, and sometimes I just have to sit in awe and thank Jesus every day for letting me be a part of a musical world.

Music has always been a part of my life. I grew up singing Anastasia at the top of my lungs, dancing around with my mom singing with me, and even then I knew music was special. Eventually, I began to understand what music could do and that I was able to be someone who could share my love of music with the world. I sang at church, I sang in choirs, and in school, I did everything I possibly could to learn all I could about music. I wanted to try and wrap my brain around how music could give me goosebumps and how when I heard a certain song, I was brought back to a different time, a different world even, where I could escape to when I was feeling sad. However, even with everything I ever learned, nothing prepared me for what was to come and how music would be so influential in my life.

On Christmas morning in 2004, I lost my father. I never knew what loss felt like until that day, and I don't think I realized just exactly what sadness meant until I had to sit in a black dress in front of a casket in a cold church. All I knew was that there was something missing, and I had no idea how to fill that void. Fortunately for me, music was able to fill that hole. I would listen to my Dad's favorite songs on repeat, and somehow he was there with me, and I was back in that old Ford Explorer of his, singing along with him to rock songs with him as if he had never left. From that day on, even with life throwing curveballs every chance that it could, music was there to bring back pieces of things I had lost along the way, and I was able to find myself happy again.

Music is pretty much the one thing in this world able to connect people the way that it does. Music has no language barrier. Music can take you places you never thought you'd be able to go back to. Music is able to help those with speech impairments able to speak again. Music is even there for people who may not be able to physically hear it because they can still feel it. There is no explanation to how music has the ability to heal, but it does... and, I'm beyond grateful for it. Magic might only exist in fairy tales and lullabies, but music comes pretty close to everything we ever read or imagined as kids.

This world may seem dark at times, but there is one light I know that will never quit shining.

Music.