Good Music!

Coming from a farm in small-town Minnesota, I was raised on good ole’ country music. Everything from Hank Williams and Johnny Cash to my more currently developed tastes of Dierks Bentley, Jon Pardi, and George Strait. I pride myself on being able to name the artist and song title to almost every song on the station. There’s nothing better than singing to a new hit with the windows rolled down.  I didn’t think lyrics had much significance on me until my first week on SPIRITUS. We all climbed in the cars to head to our first mass together. What came out of the speakers was my first big wake-up call. Christian contemporary. There I was, sitting amongst these beautiful strangers (we’d just met an hour earlier) all singing along & I’d never heard of it. Song after song, I soon realized no one would be changing it to 100.1 Big Country anytime soon. Woah. Nine months, I thought to myself “can I do this”? Little did I know, this genre switch(foot) was just one of many alterations I would encounter in the upcoming days and weeks. Expanding on this genre switch out, no longer am I filling my heart with songs revolving around subjects like beer and back roads, allowing them to subconsciously desensitize me to the repercussions of mixing Jack Daniels and Jesus. Now songs like Priceless (King and Country) and At the Table (Josh Garrels) are filtering into my heart and I have no reservations believing in the lyrics or belting them out in the hallway. Mind you, this journey is far from over. I don’t plan to switch over completely anytime soon (not all country has bad connotations attached to it), but I am learning to appreciate new flavors of music, music that aligns with my morals, and embrace this part of being a missionary.

-Elizabeth Senkyr