It’s your big solo. You’ve practiced for weeks to hit all the right notes. Your powerful bridge is to die for. You’re about to knock this thing out of the park. The intro starts and the anticipation builds. You open your mouth to sing and…absolutely nothing comes out. You keep trying because you’re supposed to sing and everyone is looking at you and expecting you to sing, but there’s nothing. What’s even worse than that, when something does come out, it’s that mousy squeak that you never want to hear. It is such an embarrassing moment and it seems like it last for 6 years and you feel 3 inches tall and you run and hide and you try to rip out your vocals chords. Okay that’s a little extreme, but as a singer that’s sort of how it feels.

I share this because it happened to me last Sunday. I was singing at my church and I had been fighting a cold all last week. I got ready to sing a song in preparation for the sermon and it just wasn’t there anymore. This song felt as if it lasted for 20 minutes. Not only was I vocally shot, but my confidence was gone and started forgetting words. Here’s how you know when you didn’t do that well…when it was over the pastor says something like “we appreciate your dedication for coming out even when you were so sick”. That’s not a compliment on how well you did. That is more of a comment to say, we know you tried but you weren’t that good. Now Jeff may read this and think that he didn’t say that, but it was similar. Hey, sometimes those of us who sing for a living have days where we aren’t on top of our game. Last Sunday was DEFINITELY one of those for me.