Here's a true confession . . . I'm a hoarder.
Now, before you get worried and stage an intervention, you should know I only hoard one thing, and that one thing takes up very little room in my house. That's because what I hoard is . . . music.
Now, back in the day, my hoarding was more of a problem, since I had cassette tapes and CDs stacked and hidden everywhere, but now, thanks to my handy dandy iTunes account, all I need to store my collection is my phone.
I have always listened to a wide variety of musical genres. My CD case used to contain everything from the soundtrack to Les Miserables to Bob Marley to Reba's greatest hits. And yep, I'll go ahead and own it, my guilty pleasure was old school gangsta rap. But there was one genre I just couldn't get behind: Christian Rock.
I just thought Christian rock, praise music, worship songs, or whatever else you want to call it was weird. I think I equated it with those televangelists who told me to touch the screen and feel the power. I also felt like the singers just repeated the same lines over and over again, second verse, same as the first.
Not only did I think Christian rock was strange, but I thought the people who listened to it were a little strange too. I mean, they were always closing their eyes and putting their hands in the air. Kinda funny I labeled them strange for that, seeing as how I'm usually the first one to wave my hands in the air, and I keep wavin' 'em like I just don't care.
Then last year a friend challenged me to listen to nothing but Christian music for two weeks and see what happened. I decided to start out slowly with Alan Jackson's album of traditional hymns, Precious Memories. As a long-time country music fan, I felt safe with him singing songs I had heard my entire life. As the two weeks progressed, I branched out little by little to more contemporary artists, and what do you know, I found some that I really liked. And the more I listened, the more words I knew, and the more comfortable I felt belting out the lyrics in the car, in the shower, and around the house.
Turns out, I had been wrong- modern Christian music and those who listen to it aren't weird at all. Don't get me wrong, on Sunday mornings, I still want my traditional hymns and my organ. And when I go to the gym, I still bring my friends Pink, Pitbull, and Flo Rida. But I realized that maybe I was a little too quick to totally discount a whole genre of music simply because I didn't know every word to every song. And I will say, listening to a song like Hillary Scott's Still or NEEDTOBREATHE's Washed By the Water on my ride to school is a much more uplifting way to start the day than by listening to something like ACDC's Highway to Hell or Ozzy Osbourne's Crazy Train.
It's easy for us to be skeptical about things we don't know. Unfortunately, sometimes I judge people and places without even meaning to. Thoughts invade my head, and I deem something strange, wrong, or weird without even thinking about it, much less giving it a real chance.
The point of this post isn't to convince you to like praise music. As a musical genre, it may not be your jam. I'm just suggesting we should all step out of our comfort zones once in awhile. We need to be open to trying new things so we don't end up missing out on something we may really like. Take sushi, for example- who would guess raw fish wrapped in seaweed would be so delicious?
And let's face it- we're all a little weird, with our own idiosyncrasies. I mean, I don't like for my food to touch, I choke every single time I eat powdered sugar, and I laugh at funerals (for more on that, click here). Thankfully, I found someone who found those quirks to be rather endearing. Sometimes the things we worry others may find odd about us end up being exactly what they love the most.
So, go ahead and try the strange food. Listen to the weird music. Talk to the girl with the bizarre hair. Make a habit of looking for the beauty in the different. Like me, you may be pleasantly surprised by what you find.
