Trying to find my purpose in life...

My conducting professor said something to me the other day as we were watching one of my conducting videos. "You look like you're trying too hard." Conducting has been, or at least was, the bane of my existence. For a long time I said I wanted to teach general music, but secretly inside I was afraid of conducting. Last semester, I took Choral Repertoire. I really, really liked that class. And I thought, Maybe I can do this choir thing.

My friend Mary wrote about being a music major, "Life as a music major continues-I am always practicing the piano or the violin or singing, or doing ear training or practicing solfege or analyzing non chord tones or resolving V7 chords...." It's pretty busy stuff. But I love it. I love studying music. It can be a pain, but it's amazing.

I'm going to hate saying this, but I haven't been up on my devotions as much because of school work--and yet, for some reason, in His mercy and grace, He has been making ways for me to get through this tough time. I got upset the other night because my music history professor had given us an extra packet of reading for Friday, and it was Thursday night and I hadn't read it yet, and I had too much other stuff to do for his class, and I couldn't read it... so in class, what does he say? "We won't even get to that stuff today." I know that seems trivial, but it's huge for me. A friend pointed out, "God knows you're a student, and He knows you are working hard to study."

(Part of it is school work, but I'll be honest... part of it is that I'm afraid that God will tell me that no, this isn't what He wants me to do, when He says to cast our cares on Him.)

I somehow have the impression that I can only serve God if I'm working in a church. But if I want to teach, how can I glorify God through that? How can I build His Kingdom by working in the public schools? I feel like I'm sinning if I get excited about studying music or thinking about teaching.