Lately, I’ve found myself thinking about the people God placed along my musical journey.
Looking back, I realize that every season had its teachers.
Some taught me technique. Others taught me creativity. Some taught me discipline. Others taught me healing. None of them probably realized the role they were playing at the time, but together they became part of a story that God has been writing for decades.
It all started with my first piano teacher, Ms. Henson.
She taught me how to read music, but she also introduced me to the organ and the beauty of traditional hymns. I probably tested her patience more than once, but she never stopped encouraging me. She celebrated when my parents bought me my first piano—a gift they gave me when I was in second grade that would shape so much of my life. I stayed with her until she retired, just before I entered high school.
Then came Ms. Williams.
She was a different kind of teacher.
She pushed me technically. I dreaded seeing that metronome sitting on top of the piano, but she taught me precision, discipline, and consistency. At the same time, she gave me room to interpret music rather than simply play notes on a page. She challenged me with increasingly difficult classical repertoire while helping me grow into my role as a church pianist.
I was only fifteen when I became our church pianist.
What started as filling a need became a ministry that lasted well into my late twenties.
By the time I reached college, another door opened.
I became involved with my local Baptist Student Ministry, leading worship alongside an incredibly gifted vocalist and a group of talented musicians. It was there that I learned to chart songs, transpose keys, think about arrangements, and lead a team instead of simply accompanying one.
Those years quietly built leadership skills I would carry with me long after I left the stage.
Later, I joined a band with five guys. It stretched my creativity in new ways and gave me room to write from a more instrumental perspective. Looking back, it was a fun season, but it was also more performance-driven than purpose-driven. Sometimes God allows us to experience things that aren’t our final destination because they’re preparing us for where we’re eventually headed.
That season eventually led to recording projects and opportunities I never would have imagined.
Then life brought me to San Antonio.
That season changed everything.
I found another set of mentors and an entirely different musical language. The keyboard parts were some of the hardest riffs I’ve ever learned. Gospel, R&B, hip-hop, and Latin influences all came together in ways I’d never experienced before.
But Rick and Liz gave me something even greater than musical growth.
They became part of a healing process I didn’t even know I needed.
I’m sure I gave them plenty of headaches. I’ve always had a bit of a stubborn streak. Looking back now, though, I understand why they challenged me the way they did. Their investment shaped not only my musicianship but my character, and I carry pieces of those lessons with me to this day.
Like every season before it, that one eventually came to a close.
Life was changing again, and God was quietly redirecting my attention.
Eventually, I returned home.
For a while I continued playing consistently and became involved with bands here and there, but gradually my focus shifted toward education. Music quietly moved into the background. My instruments came with me to Lubbock, but they were mostly played in private rather than on stage.
Sometimes life asks us to be hidden for a season.
Not because our gifts disappear.
Because they’re being preserved.
Over the years, my instruments followed me from house to house and season to season. For a while they sat quietly in a spare room at my parents’ home. Recently I’ve begun gathering them back together—my keyboards, guitars, violin, drum machines, MIDI recording equipment, and the piano my parents gave me all those years ago.
I think I even still have the tiny keyboard I practiced on when I was six or seven years old.
That little keyboard still makes me smile.
Looking back, I’m incredibly grateful for parents who invested in music. They didn’t just buy instruments.
They invested in possibility.
These days I’ve been hunting for another acoustic guitar and a very specific keyboard.
(No… not a Casio. If you know, you know.)
We’ll see what this season brings.
Ironically, my day-to-day work couldn’t be more different.
Most days are incredibly cerebral. I’ve become deeply immersed in research, governance, decision intelligence, and academic literature. Recently I’ve been exploring an idea that I genuinely believe may be something novel. It has me buried in journal publications and research papers.
Honestly…
It’s probably the perfect way to begin the doctoral journey I’m now on.
I have no idea what I’m getting myself into.
But I’m approaching it the same way I approached that very first piano lesson—with awe, curiosity, and a willingness to learn.
Soak it all in.
Ask questions.
Do the hard work.
Keep practicing.
I know it won’t all be easy.
But then again…
Neither was learning piano.
What I’ve finally discovered after all these years is that life doesn’t require me to choose between creativity and scholarship.
For a long time, I believed it had to be one or the other.
Music or research.
Art or leadership.
Creativity or strategy.
Now I realize they actually strengthen one another.
Some of my clearest thinking happens while I’m sitting behind a keyboard.
Some of my best ideas come while I’m driving down the highway singing at the top of my lungs.
Music creates space for thought.
Creativity fuels innovation.
Rest often makes room for clarity.
So if you see me driving around singing my heart out or staring off into space, I’m probably either trying to solve a problem… or taking a much-needed break.
After all these years, I think I’m finally learning what balance looks like.
For that, I have Ricardo to thank.
For years I assumed balance meant giving something up. If I became more serious academically, surely creativity would have to shrink. If I leaned back into music, perhaps scholarship would suffer.
Ricardo helped me see something different.
He reminded me—not so much through words as through the way he has supported every season—that I don’t have to become less of one thing to become more of another. God never asked me to stop being creative in order to become a researcher. He simply invited me to let each part of who He created me to be strengthen the other.
That realization has been freeing.
As I look back over these seasons, I can’t help but think about Romans 8:28:
“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.”
For years, I thought that verse was mostly about difficult circumstances—that somehow God would eventually make the hard things worth it.
Now I see something more.
It’s also about preparation.
The piano lessons.
The metronome.
The worship teams.
The bands.
The mentors.
The quiet years.
The education.
The research.
The songwriting.
The doctoral journey.
None of it has been wasted.
Every season has prepared me for the next one. Skills I didn’t realize I was developing have become the very things I rely on today. Lessons that once felt frustrating became invaluable. People who invested in me shaped not only the musician I’ve become, but the leader, researcher, and follower of Christ I’m still becoming.
Romans 8:28 doesn’t promise that every season will be easy.
It promises that God is faithfully working through every season for His purposes.
I know God is leading Ricardo and me into another new season.
I have no idea what it will hold.
But every season so far has had its teachers.
Every season has had its purpose.
Every season has revealed another piece of God’s faithfulness.
Sometimes I picture that little six-year-old sitting at a keyboard, her feet dangling above the pedals, unable to imagine where those first piano lessons would lead.
She couldn’t have known about the worship teams, the bands, the mentors, the classrooms, the research papers, the doctoral journey, or the songs that hadn’t yet been written.
But God knew.
He was already composing a story that would take decades to unfold.
Looking back, I can finally hear the melody.
Every lesson.
Every teacher.
Every detour.
Every quiet season.
Every new beginning.
None of it was wasted.
The same God who guided those small hands across the keys is still leading every step today.
So I’ll keep learning with the same wonder I had as a little six-year-old sitting down at a piano for the very first time.
I’ll keep creating.
I’ll keep studying.
I’ll keep writing.
And I’ll trust that the God who has been faithful through every season will be faithful in this one too.
