Hello there, friends of Unity Joy of Life!

Before we get into today's lesson, I want to just let you know that starting November the 17th, that's on a Monday, through the 21st, that's on a Friday, at 8 o'clock in the morning to 8:30 in the morning Pacific Time, I'm going to be doing gratitude meditations, getting us ready for Thanksgiving week. So if you would like to be a part of that, just go to unityjoyoflife.org and you'll see next week, there'll be a link there and it will start, as I said, on the 17th of November. It's a great way to come together and really magnify the spirit of Thanksgiving. So I hope to see you there. 

In the 1970s, I was dating the quarterback of the football team for just a minute, actually, it might have been like a month or so. And one Friday night, after the game, he tells me that he's leaving me for one of the cheerleaders. And I quickly went to the payphone and I called my dad to pick me up. And I just held everything in. I wasn't going to cry in front of anyone. I just was holding it in. You know that feeling, you get this little like bubble in your throat, like, oh, "I'm not going to cry. I'm not going to talk to anybody." And I waited and I waited.

And then I see his car just coming around the corner. I was poised to just jump in and just get home so I could cry. He stopped, and my brother, from out of nowhere, runs and gets into the front seat. Well, I had to get in the back seat. And my dad could tell that something was going on with me. He turned to the back seat. He said, "Are you okay?" And I just said, "I'm fine". My brother was high. It was the 70s. Hello! So he didn't have anything to say.

So my dad plugged in his favorite Nat King Cole 8-track. And the song that was playing was Smile. Hello!

At the time, I just thought, "Could there be any other song? Please". The lyrics go like this:

Smile, even though your heart is aching.

Smile, even though it's breaking. 

When there are clouds in the sky, you'll get by. 

If you smile through your fear and sorrow, smile and maybe tomorrow you'll see the sun come shining through.

Well, at first I thought, "Oh, God, please, I'm really going to just start crying right now". But there was a moment that I looked out the window and I see this full moon. It was all of a sudden just like my world just narrowed into that one NOW moment.

And then Nat King Cole sang that verse. "Tomorrow, you'll see the sun come shining through". And it was that moment of, "I don't want to take the steering wheel of my life. I'm literally in the back seat. I just want the Holy Spirit. I want God to be the steering wheel of my life".

It was this "Jesus take the wheel" type of energy, that moment, if you will. Well, the next day it was really interesting because it was such a shift in that moment of being completely devastated to feeling like, "Oh my God, everything's going to be okay". So the next day I woke up completely new.

Grace had just washed over me. 

Now, you might have some songs like that. You might have songs that shifted you at some point in your life. They may have refined and defined you. And if you want, you can write in the comment section below what songs may have refined and defined you. The Bible constantly talks about music, music that heals, music that shifts, music that comforts, music that uplifts. When David played the harp, King Saul found himself in great relief. In Luke, it talks about the angels praising through song at Jesus's birth. Many musicians say that they have to step aside and let a Higher Power take over during their music writing process. Stevie Wonder describes his songwriting as being guided by something beyond himself. Leonard Cohen once said, if I knew where these songs came from, I'd go there more often. I think that's a pretty good line right there. Prince believed he was a conduit for divine creativity, often saying that he did not write the song so much as he just received them. 

So suffice it to say, when you hear songs that shift you, have they been orchestrated? Have they been orchestrated so that you hear it at a specific time? And do you pay attention? That's the big question. Pay attention when a song is orchestrated to come into your life at a specific time.

Well, I just thought that maybe you might want to contemplate that this week. 

Until next week, I'm keeping the faith for you.

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