Make your own kind of music

I heard this Mama Cass oldie the other day, and it got stuck in my head in the way catchy songs are wont to do.  So I pulled it up on YouTube to hear the whole thing.  The song encourages the listener to "make your own kind of music; sing your own special song...even if nobody else sings along."  And that got me thinking.

Some might say that "making your own kind of music" means doing whatever you want, regardless of the ways it affects you or others.   This is selfish individualism, which if left unchecked, ultimately destroys you and your relationships.  But I think that to "make your own kind of music" means to follow God's call no matter what the cost.

Different musical instruments may play the same tune, but they sound different from one another.  They "make their own kind of music." I've always sort of marched to the beat of my own drum.  Certain life choices have placed me on a little different path than others.  Sometimes people haven't understood why I would make those choices or hold those preferences and values.  Sometimes "just to do your thing's/the hardest thing to do."

But I've learned that if doing "your thing" is also doing "God's thing," it becomes a beautiful kind of music, and quite fulfilling.  God gives us certain interests and talents and experiences, and He invites us to use those gifts for the benefit of His people.  When we do that, we may sacrifice, we may have bad days, we may experience some "rough goin'," as the song says...but we also find a certain fulfillment and joy we would not find otherwise.  And that joy becomes contagious, spilling out of us to affect the people we meet.

As I live out this new adventure, I realize that more than ever I'm making my own kind of music.  The circumstances of my life are rather different than I envisioned for myself, and rather different from most of my friends'.  I have sacrificed some things that have been hard.  Yet I am thriving, and exhilarated by the joy of doing what God called me to do.  More than that, I think I am affecting others.  When I decided to embrace this new adventure, I embraced a mission to model for young people, especially young women, how to live as a Catholic layperson in the world.  My students' response to me indicates that I am fulfilling that mission.  Just yesterday a young woman said to me, "I look at you, and I want to be like you." I have tremendous opportunities to impact others, and I take that responsibility very seriously.  I want to help them make their own kind of music!

Pope John Paul said in his Letter to Artists, "All men and women are entrusted with the task of crafting their own life: in a certain sense, they are to make of it a work of art, a masterpiece."  As I make my own kind of music, I pray that with God's grace I am making a masterpiece.  And I also pray that my life encourages others to make their own kind of music - not the cacophony of selfish individualism, but the symphony of a life wholeheartedly dedicated to God's call.