What has music done for me? It hasn’t helped me cure cancer or solve the problem of crippling depression, and it certainly hasn’t made my life stress free. What has it done then? It has made me stress, worry, and sometimes even made me feel like I am not good enough. It is one thing to listen to music, but it is another to love it, breathe it, and base the rest of your life on it. Why in the world would I choose something that makes me stay up all night thinking about it? Or why would I choose to worry about what I could be and stressing out about what I have to do? Why would I put up with the stress of bars and life of counting when there will always be someone better than me, and nothing in this world can change that except God himself?

It’s because this is my calling. This is my life. This is my testimony. This is me. You see, when you find yourself doing what God wants, then the devil will always be there to whisper, “You can’t.” I lived most of my life going in a circle, not knowing what to do with myself, and wondering why I am on this earth. What is my purpose? Why do I matter? It took me until the second semester of my senior year to realize that what stresses me out the most, is also what I love to do more than anything else.

I have always been gifted with music even before I stepped in a band room. When the middle school band director came to my school, the first thing I played was the trumpet. When it touched my lips it didn’t feel foreign or wrong; it felt like an extension of me—something that allowed me to speak my true voice. I easily played two different notes that same day: G and C. The teacher was so shocked that she asked me to do it again, and I did. Although I seemed to already have a gift and ability to play, I initially went to school without putting much effort into playing because I hadn’t yet realized my love and passion for music. In fact, when we had chair tests, I played one scale for the advanced band while my other classmates played at least four times that amount, and I promptly got the last chair. I didn’t care about the fact that I was deemed as the “least skilled” player when compared to the other trumpeters. In fact, I was happy about it because I got to sit next to my best friend. Because I knew I was better than that, having the last chair neither fazed me nor pushed me to do better and accomplish more.

Fortunately, I learned a lot while playing the 3rd and 2nd part during my time as the lowest chair. I became more humble and saw how vital both of those parts are. Before that, I saw them as useless in comparison to the mighty 1st trumpet. However, I learned how they made the music memorable and how they pushed the songs from mediocre to phenomenal just by providing a more wholesome and beautiful sound.

It wasn’t until I started hanging out with my now best friends that I really started to realize the gift and passion I have for music. The final straw that made me commit was when someone tried to tell me that I wasn’t a good player simply because I sat the last chair. You see, anger and defiance gave me determination, which later grew into inspiration. That whole summer, I practiced and practiced. I tried harder than I had ever tried before. When school finally started back, I got the first chair and kept it. Through my hard work and determination to prove someone wrong, I went from “the worst” to “the best” without any transitions in between. Unfortunately, some people had the nerve to say that I only got first because I was a senior, but you can never change another person’s mind; and I knew the amount of work I put into it. No matter what people say, it will never be able to change the truth.

Despite all of that, I still didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life even though my future was staring me right in the face. It took until nearly the middle of my second semester that I realized I wanted to do music. It was the scariest decision of my life since I knew absolutely nothing about music other than how to blow in a horn and read some notes on a page. I ended up at ABAC and came out making not anything below an A in all of my music classes. I saw people complain and whine about how hard it was, but I had no sympathy for them. If I can learn everything I need by studying and paying attention when I didn’t know a thing (not even key signatures) when I started, then that means anyone could do it.

I ask again, what has music done for me? It gave me purpose. It gave me a reason to wake up every single day with determination and not doubt. I might mess up, and I will fail, but I have the faith to keep going—faith that I never knew before enveloping myself in the world of music. That is what music did for me.