{This post originally appeared on February 10, 2015.}
Avoiding is the hardest to do when you’re really trying to avoid something. If you don’t have a sweet tooth but enjoy the occasional desert and then try to cut back on sugar, that’s when desserts and sugary sweets pop up everywhere. When you’re having a bad hair day coupled with an unfortunate zit and you want to see no one…but then you run out of toilet paper and you have to go to Target where you see everyone you know. You know how these things go.
I dare say there’s nothing that will cause you to avoid things more than the end of a relationship. That’s when you start avoiding certain people, parts of town and public places.
My last relationship ended (technically) early last summer. I say technically because while the actual relationship was over, my heart and emotions took a wee bit longer to heal. (Or at least in the grand scheme of life the healing time will appear wee.) I enacted the typical avoidance plan: no certain areas of town, unfollowed people on social media and instructed all my friends that his name was not to be spoken. I didn’t go places we went and did an 180 turn at the onset of anything that reminded me of him.
And the music died.
Music was huge in our relationship. This is Nashville so I feel obligated to say no, he’s not a musician/singer/songwriter. But he did play the guitar and sing to me on our first date (bonus points for him). We spent many dates on Broadway listening to live music. I introduced him to my favorite Nashville band (shout out to Johnny T!) and Spotify. We were that gushy couple who would tell each other when a song reminded us of the other one or when we heard a song we knew the other would love. It was disgusting (and completely awesome at the time).
After the fact though, not so awesome. I found I couldn’t just avoid Luke Bryan, Matchbox 20 and Justin Timberlake. (Gasp! There might have been some acceptable JT.) I was avoiding complete genres. I put together Spotify playlists of songs I deemed to be “safe”. I was only listening to Christian radio stations, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s just I was hiding.
And then there was last Saturday. I’m not sure what caused the flip, but I found myself singing along to THE song. And I didn’t even realize it until the song was almost over. The better news was my heart never realized it all.
Suddenly, I couldn’t get enough of the radio, specifically country music. I queued up my former favorite Spotify playlist and sang loudly. I put on a living room dance party that would have made Meredith and Christina proud. My soul had been musically dehydrated, thirsting for songs and artists I loved. Now they were pouring forth from my speakers like a water gushing from a well-primed spigot. I nearly drowned myself in Luke Bryan, the Eli Young Band, Jake Owen and Joe Nichols. Turns out Zac Brown has a new song! In the days that followed I have experienced all these “put away” songs as if I was hearing them for the first time. Unblemished. Untainted.
To quote one of my very favorite lyrics: “When I was drowning, that’s when I could finally breathe.”
And the music lived.
What has the end of a relationship or pain of a season caused to die in you? Don’t lose hope…it can live again. Resurrection happens. My experience with resurrection is that when it does, it brings more life with it.