Looking over my
life, I’ve no doubt made thousands of decisions. I’ve looked back at what I consider to be the largest
decisions of my life, which have had the biggest impact on my life. To me, there’s really no way I
can rank these decisions, but I have come up with a list of five decisions I
have made and how I feel these have impacted me.
HIGH SCHOOL:
I transferred to
OHS my sophomore year of high school.
I actually asked my parents to let me transfer my freshman year, but for
whatever reason, the decision was for me to wait until my sophomore year. I think this was the best
educational decision for me.
I always liked school, but I just didn’t feel like I would get the
attention I needed at the school in the town where we lived. I wanted to go to the high school
where my mother and aunt graduated.
While it is a public high school, it is very rural, and the year I
graduated we had 42 graduates in my class—the funny thing is—that’s one of the
largest classes to ever graduate from the school. I was already involved heavily with my church youth
group. The decision turned
out to be exactly what I needed.
While I was an average-to-slightly above average student, I got
individualized attention in areas where I struggled, like Algebra. As I’ve already written about in
a previous posting, I had the greatest English teacher ever, pushing me in
every way imaginable.
Musically, I was afforded the priceless opportunity to accompany the
high school choir my junior and senior years—quite literally hands on
experience I would not have gotten anywhere else. It was also at this high school during a college and career
fair my sophomore year that I learned about a little college called
“Cumberland” in the hills of southeastern Kentucky, which would quickly become
my only college choice.
COLLEGE:
I had applied and
was accepted at Cumberland before I had ever even set foot on the campus. I was that certain it was the right
college for me. Upon my arrival
there in March of my senior year for my official tour, Orientation in June and
moving there in August, my decision only became more concrete. The college had about 1500
students at the time. Much like my
high school, Cumberland offered small classes, individual attention and
everyone quickly became a close-knit family. I majored in Music, beginning as a Music Education
major with a minor in French, with an aspiration to teach Music and French. After a couple of years, I
decided to drop the “Education” part of the degree and just complete my BA in
Vocal Music. Cumberland
impacted my life not so much by what I learned in the classroom (I honestly
would have trouble sitting down and analyzing a chord if my life depended on
it, and couldn’t really tell you in great detail the mechanics involved in
singing without a refresher course), but by what I learned about myself, the
world, and the friendships I still hold so deeply today.
PIANO:
Piano gave my life
purpose. I was the child you
always hear about who was chosen last at recess. Nobody wanted uncoordinated me with no knowledge of sports
on their team. And so, I
spent my life searching—searching for something I could do, looking for
something where I could excel.
I was drawn to music as far back as I can recall. I didn’t then, and I don’t now,
have an incredible sense of rhythm or coordination, but as I get older, I am
getting a bit better in both regards. We had a music teacher in elementary school. She gave piano lessons at the school. I recall as vividly as though it were
yesterday, begging for piano lessons.
The answer was always no. I
don’t know why. Perhaps my parents
thought “well, he’s never been good at anything else, why throw our money away
on that?” Whatever the reason, my
grandmother stepped in while I was a freshman in high school and saw to it that
I began my formal study of piano.
My parents never had to tell me to practice. NEVER. In fact,
it was more often the case that I was told to STOP practicing because I had
been playing from the time I got home from school until the time I went to
bed. Piano became my
sanctuary, my friend and the only thing I enjoyed. I cannot imagine where my life would be today with out
my friend, the piano. The piano
has been my expression when words fail, has been my place to hide and my place
to thrive. Today, piano still
serves me as my part-time job, living my dream as a church musician and playing
for the occasional wedding. The
piano has been good to me, and is definitely one of the very best decisions I
ever made.
MOVING TO BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA:
I made the decision
to move to Birmingham following the completion the work towards my degree,
which I finished in December 1997, and relocated to Birmingham in March
1998. Birmingham has been
home the vast majority of my adult life.
I’ve seen the relationship that prompted the move to end, the
relationship following that one to end.
I’ve watched as my two best friends from college completed their time
here and moved away to start their family in Kentucky. I’ve developed my
professional life here. I’ve
converted to Catholicism here. My
decision to move here has impacted my life because it forced me out of the
comfort zone of moving back to the familiar after college. One might say that this has
become a comfort zone over the last 15 years, and maybe that is true. What I do know is that I have
grown so much here as an adult and my life has been enriched far beyond what I
would have imagined 17 years ago when I thought I would be moving to Knoxville,
TN for the rest of my life. If
home is where the heart is, the Birmingham is home.
MEN’S CHORUS:
In May, 2008 I
attended the spring concert of a new organization to Birmingham-what was,
essentially, Birmingham’s “gay men’s chorus”. Immediately, I fell in love with the richness of the
voices, gathered in harmony and I told myself that I would join in the fall
when the choir started back. And
so, the day of the first rehearsal came around. I struggled all day long with whether or not I would
go. In fact, I went and sat in the
parking lot for a good half an hour while deciding if I was, indeed, going to
go in. Finally, mustering
the courage, I opened the door and walked into the church where the choir was
meeting. I should mention here,
that while I had, at that point, lived in Birmingham for over 10 years, I knew
virtually nobody outside of work or church. I had no gay friends, really, other than a few here
and there, but I was absolutely petrified to walk in to that choir rehearsal,
not knowing a single, solitary soul there. How quickly my fears were quelled! Within a few weeks, I had
made several friends and began building my family of choice. Within a few months, I even was
elected as the President of the Men’s Chorus, a position I proudly held for a
year and a half. The
organization impacted me musically, by cultivating a musical experience unlike
any I had ever experienced before.
Music breaks walls and barriers. This was true for me. Joining the MCCS was a sort of second coming out to me
by providing me with a social life, experiences and people I am almost certain
I would have never met otherwise.
I made the decision to leave the organization a couple of years ago
because of other commitments, but I’ll always be thankful for the role it has
played in my life—for helping me find MY voice in the community.
Here’s my
confession: As I started writing this, I thought these are all single solitary
decisions that impacted my life, but as I was writing, I saw far more clearly
how all of the decisions overlapped in one or another. Had I not transferred to OHS, I
may have never heard of Cumberland,
had I not insisted on piano lessons, I would have never been given the
opportunity to accompany the choir, had I not gone to OHS, I may not have the
skills necessary to write this blog.
Had I not gone to Cumberland, I likely would not have met the
individuals who prompted my move to Birmingham. Had I not moved to Birmingham, I probably wouldn’t
have converted to Catholicism, and I definitely wouldn’t have been a part of
the MCCS. Every single
decision—large or small has ripple effects. We may not see them for years in the future, but when we do,
as I have just done, we can look back with awe and say “I am truly and deeply
blessed beyond any scale of measure.” And, that, my friends, is something worth telling and
remembering, because indeed, as we travel the “broken road”, we are assured to
be led exactly where we belong.
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