Wisdom on Shuffle

When I consider the best advice or most meaningful words I've heard in my life, I don't immediately think of family or friends or teachers...I think of the songs that have accompanied me through everything, the soundtrack of my life.

The first song I remember catching my attention and taking up residence in my heart is "Free Fallin'" by Tom Petty. Of the many things I've erased from my mind about my dad's viewing, this song playing softly through the funeral home, lulling me into a temporary state of peace, is one of the few things I hold onto with an iron fist. 

Not such a bad way to leave this world, is it?

From there, the herky-jerky memories of my youth leap all the way to high school, a time when fitting in jumps straight to the top of the to-do list. I was no different in that desire, yet I failed miserably. I didn't fit into the high school prototype, and I know now that I never could. At the time, though, music helped ease that realization when it seemed such a very important goal. 

Reassurance. The promise of a better future. Music, and its most powerful words, contain all the hope that a person can't manage on her own. (SIDENOTE: Seeing Everclear at the Chameleon club years later was one of the most fulfilling experiences I've had, a teenage dream realized!) 

When Brian and I were planning our wedding, a small Las Vegas affair, I was surprised he was just as adamant in his music choice as I was in mine. I walked down the aisle to him to his choice, Alan Jackson's "Remember When."

We walked down the aisle together, husband and wife, to my selection: 

We walked through the door together, and we've held on to one another since then. 

Years later, when we decided we were ready to grow our family, I got pregnant almost immediately and, at 11 weeks, discovered I'd lost the baby. And not too long after I was given a clearance of good health, we found that I was pregnant yet again...only to have more than one doctor say that timing and probability was not in our favor. From the first moment of possibility, though, I KNEW that I had my baby, my amazing little girl (seriously: I said this from the first moment) ready to join our family. Through each word of warning and each moment of discouragement, I'd leave each appointment with one song blaring on repeat. With my hand over my stomach and words of defiance in my ears, I promised my little one that I would always fight for her.

With Tom Petty singing me through another of life's journeys, I found (through no surprise to me!) the joy of becoming a mommy to my sweet girl with Brian as my partner-in-parenting-crime. 

I've always used music to guide me, and I suspect I always will. Through good and bad, it offers the greatest wisdom I could imagine. And on the most typical of days, it reminds me that I'm never, ever alone.