Grace Has Amazing Hands To Hold You, Genevieve

Ever since I was a child I can remember singing and playing in church. It's been a God send for me. When applying for college came around senior year I was dead set on biology. My big brother was studying it, so of course it appealed to me. I remember one night at the dinner table, my mom said, "Ya know Gen, have you ever considered music?" I thought to myself... NO, music isn't a job. And then she continued to coax me... "Outside of your school work that's all you do." And she was right, I was in musicals, choral, show choir and played in the worship band at church. So, I finally gave in and started to think about the possibilites. I applied for the music in worship program at Biola University in Los Angeles and got in. It wouldn't have happened without the encouragement of my family and mentors in music at the time.

Freshman year was a series of ups and downs and ultimately I decided that I wanted to study music, but not in the facet of worship. It was a great hobby and service to the church, but I didn't see myself having it as a vocation. I transferred to CU Denver and finished my college career in vocal performance and music business. But during that time, I lost who I was before. Connecting in church became a battle and I started to define myself in the secular world of music. It wasn't until I graduated that I realzied how much I missed worship. It was this enormous part of my life for 5 years that I somehow lost and it was heart breaking. When I finally found an amazing church that I could call home, Scum of the Earth, God kept knocking on the door of my heart. It took several months of nail bitng on my part to eventually walk up to one of the worship leaders and ask for an application.

And with that, the doors flew wide open. I started playing and then before I knew it our head pastor was asking me out for breakfast. He, with genuine care, asked me to come on board as a worship leader. It has been one fo the biggest joys in my life for the past year. I can be having the worst week and sit down to pray about the songs for our service and it's as if God is placing His hand over me and saying, "Just worship".

I've gotten back in touch with my roots and even have played some songs that meant a lot to me in high school. Many of those songs were written by Jason Stocker, the worship leader at my church growing up. His gift for worship has been one of the inspirations I've held on to throughout the years. Every once and a while I'll go to his church out in Arvada just to listen. I went this last week. We chatted after the service and it was such a blessing to be able to talk with him. I thanked him for all of his amazing songs and the inspiration that they have had on our congregation. He was truly touched and that's what makes him such an amazing person.

I suggested we play worship together soon and he was very excited at the idea. I mentioned this to Mike, my pastor, just yesterday and he said to go for it! I'm currently working on dates and concepts and love the fact that I'm blessed and able to have worship in my every day life. My prayer is to have this continue to be a genuine expression of my thanks and love to God.