Soundtracks

A sweet friend of mine and leader in our local church came up to me during a time of prayer and reflection, and very consciously shared a word from the Lord that really stunned me. 

“Soundtracks”

…what in the heck is that suppose to mean?

This does not happen to me often so when someone has something they feel like I need to hear and is a sort of divine revelation, I’m intentional to listen and understand. But this one kinda got me and I needed to mull over it a bit. My wife was beside me and almost instantly starting tearing up, as if she knew something I didn’t and that word really struck a cord in her heart, an expression of what she was feeling for a while. I’ll get back to that later. 

There are 3 questions that formed in my mind as I dug into this word “Soundtracks”. 

1. “…Does this track to what I have been feeling recently to find more peace and recharge in my life by playing more music?”

I learned how to play guitar back in college as I attempted to swoon the ladies in my early college years…..ick. It later became a practice of peace and solitude when I needed it during challenging seasons of study and learning. It became an expression of my heart when I needed a lift of encouragement, a time to reflect and show my gratitude for people in my life. 

As I started my professional career and started a family, this important practice all but disappeared. I sold my guitar and with it an avenue to recharge my soul with creative expression. Every now and again I get the itch to go buy another guitar and start playing again. It’s important to find those things in your life that bring you joy and give you that mental and emotional cleansing that we need from a troublesome world. 

I do think this is part of the “soundtrack” my friend mentioned. It was something I was already being drawn to and her words confirmed that I need to be proactive to recharge my soul. The rhythm of busyness is a siren that can drain the life we are so carefully managing. So I need to take those moments to pause, do the things that bring me joy, and that joy will overflow. 

2. “…Does this mean how my voice in our home is creating soundtrack of truth or harm in our home…?”

As the question alludes to, our voices often become the soundtrack in our homes to our loved ones and more significantly our children. As parents our voice carries such a heavy weight in their little hearts and minds. The things we repeat whether good or bad can become an anthem that they live by, most evidently witnessed outside of the home. Whenever our kids visit a friend or coming back from school, we always get the nicest compliments of them “your children are so nice and well-behaved!” Well at least they are doing it somewhere and we are getting something right! We invest heavily in our kids being kind to one another in our home, to speak kindly, and it is a constant soundtrack we have in the background of their minds. 

Our frustration and anger towards our children play a completely different tune. Being quick to anger can easily a become quick invitation to Cry-Fest 2024. The statements said in anger can cause some serious identity trauma over time. Over time you can see them alter behavior in order to not get in trouble or be on the receiving end of an angry confrontation. I have experienced this first hand when the reason my kids did something was because they didn’t want to “make Daddy mad”. Is that what I want my relationship to be with my children? For them to be afraid of my anger? it is quite literally the last thing I want for them. 

The expression of anger is typically the outward action of something deeper, something lying underneath that surface that has not been mended. It is our job to do the work to understand the source of where anger finds its fuel. I want the soundtrack of my voice to be life-giving, filled with love, safety, and truth. In order to do this, I must become more cognizant of the soundtrack I’m actively playing towards my loved ones and learn how to change the tune. 

What does your soundtrack sound like? Does your voice sound of someone free of their past, or someone trapped by it? Does your voice give life to others or does it seek to devour others for the sake of survival? Does your voice inspire beauty or does it tear to shreds the beauty around you? These may sound extreme, but there not much middleground. Your voice is a soundtrack to others; take time to understand what message it is saying to others and how it could be impacting your relationships. 

3. …What is the soundtrack already rooted in our soul that is getting in the way of our relationships? 

This is a tricky question and difficult to answer, but when I meditate on this thought my mind thinks about the word wholistic. The meaning of this variation of holistic means the “whole is greater than the sum of its parts” and that a being is many elements or aspects interwoven together to form the whole of a person. We can’t attempt to understand the intent of our hearts and leave our feelings behind stranded in a sea of repression nor can we expect our feelings to pick up all the pieces of a fragmented past. We have been wholistically woven and formed, and connected to all of our parts is where our best selves emerge. 

But these parts are often broken, battered and bruised, segmented and sometimes missing. I often hear the phrases “we are byproduct of our experiences” or that our experiences form “who we are”. But our experiences are just one piece of the self-puzzle. Our hearts are fertile ground for bad beliefs to grow and our minds are often the battleground. When you tell yourself over and over that “you are an imposter and no one thinks you are good enough”, over time it forms into a belief that is hard to untangle; It grows like kudzu choking out all of the beautiful parts of your soul. 

This soundtrack of “I’m not good enough” written by Imposter Syndrome plays in my head too often. Perhaps it was a defense mechanism that protected me as a kid through hard times when I felt like all of the things that made me “me” were swept away when I moved away from everything I knew at a young age. Perhaps it was easier to believe that lie and hide in the shadows of loneliness than it was to let myself be seen and known and perhaps have my soundtrack be proven right. This inherently defective thinking is where my experience of loneliness coupled by poor self-imaging emerged into a bad belief system that is hard to divorce. 

So when I have those moments with my children where maybe I’m giving a criticism of how they could do something better, could do it this way versus that way, could it be that I am transferring this belief of imposter syndrome to them? Could I be playing a soundtrack in their little minds that “maybe I’m not good enough”?  I think it’s harsh to give ourselves that much credit and there is more that is often required to build bad beliefs, but I think it’s important to understand how our words, actions, and lack thereof produce a narrative, a soundtrack that is influentially resounding in the ears of our kids and it is impactful to their own journey in understanding themselves. 

There are times in our lives where we need to simply change the soundtrack. It’s time to hit skip on the song that is not bringing you closer to a wholesome sense of self, and starting listening to the soundtrack that brings you joy, peace, forgiveness, and restoration. You get to choose what plays on repeat in your head and what noise fuels your thinking. It’s a journey to understand what soundtrack is even playing in the background and how that is impacting your relationships. Do the deep dive necessary to uncover what your soundtrack is saying to you and what it is saying to others; your children are listening to that soundtrack closer than you realize.