Full Circle Moment from Shy Girl to Performer; Hotel California as the Magical Song
Being Validated on this Long Journey from Shutdown to Spirit Driven
JUN 21, 2024
I was a shygirl. Totally shutdown. No two ways around it.
I admired musicians greatly, to the point of envy. I secretly wrote deep, deep poetry about life and metaphysics and all the things I ponder in my soul. But I held it all back. I HELD IT BACK.
It wasn't anyone's fault but mine. I just didn't have the courage. And though I was always thinking spiritually, I truly lacked the faith in myself and my creator.
Back in High School, I spent most of my time as a Cheerleader. I did love inspiring people, which is at the core of who I am still today. But one year fateful year, I focused on Theater. I had always been a natural actress, doing skits with our VHS camcorder since I was young. I even took acting classes in 5th grade.
I never had the time to act in High School until that one year that God intervened: I didn't make the the cheer squad my Junior year.
Always trying to make the most of bad situations, I decided to spend that year with the drama kids. And fruitful it was, as it brought me one of my best memories of high school – Singing Hotel California at the End of Year Wrap Party. Accompanied by the best pianist in our grade (and most talented kids in our graduating class), we were a piano and voice duo that captivated the room.
The reason the memory stand out thoug is because I wasn't shy in the least. I don't know why or how. Compared to most of the highschool parties I went to, there was NO drinking of alcohol involved. It was a supernatural break from my out of control self-consciousness.
In this 10 minute window, I saw a peak of myself free of fear. I was aligned perfectly with my Spirit. And it was grand. I'm not even bragging. It just was. And I just wasn't thinking. Totally present, it all came naturally – the humour, the voice the timing. I just had to get out of my own way.
But it was just a peak. My spirit would go undercover again for many, many years.
In college, I did sing with a Picker choir (southern tradition), which I loved. Singing harmonies with your sorority sisters is time well spent!
But if you asked me to sing alone, well I just couldn't. I just wouldn't - unless I was making fun, joking around.
I set some goals to learn the guitar but my few attempts to turn my poetry into songs were left unattended and unfinished. That time in my life was pretty dark. And I was pretty defeated for such a young woman.
I worked at this dingy Ramada Inn while jumping from major to major having no idea of what or who I wanted to be in life. The Hotel was owned by an Indian family who must have been very tolerant beca my only memories were doing a terrible job for them. I frequently arrived late for my shifts, was distracted by personal relationship turmoil and consistently bad decisions.
About a 150 miles away, my family was self-destructing and I was pretending it didn't bother me.
That was truly the lowest moment for my life and the lowest point for my self-esteem.
It weighs on you to be unreliable, and toxically trying to escape the way Jonah ran for the whale. I thought I could just hid from all the anxiety, the pressure in a low performing life.
But the years passed and I finally faced graduation. It was there the misery found me and it was unbearable.
My whole life, I had been waiting for someone to discover me. For someone else to lift me up, tell me that I was worthy, to encourage me, to encourage me to sing, to give me the opportunities that would change my life.
But I can see so clearly now how I surrounded myself with people who would never do this for me. Especially because I wasn't even doing this for myself.
It became clear as I graduated college and faced so many challenges of the real world... I needed to encourage myself. I decided to be obedient to that call to do music, alone in my room at nights, singing to my creator. After living at rock bottom for a few years, I couldn't deny any longer that the only relationship that matter to me was that of my Creator's. He was the one I needed. His love and His love alone. He was the only one who could lift me up.
I admitted this to myself in the solice of my room late at night, after my 9 to 5 corporate jog.
I admitted that I felt a calling to do music.
This was the worst news to me – no wonder I was trying to hide in a whale belly of a hotel. Though I was envious of musicians, it was only in their ability to play music. Nothing in me wanted to be a career musician. I saw musicians as suffering, working class slaves who needed constant attention. I was more ambitous than to just be seen as a court jester by my highly successful peers.
However, I knew I wanted to keep singing to Him. The more I did, the more I wanted to worship him in any song – didn't even matter what the lyrics said. My purpose was to worship him in song and my 9 to 5 job was getting in the way.
Slowly, it just didn't matter what anyone else thought. The more I sang, the more the world just didn't matter anymore. My spirit was growing in me as night after night I opened my heart and soul in musical prayer.
That was how I finally got the courage to go back to school for music and follow my calling to be a musician. Night after night, year after year, I continue to sing just to my creator - whether alone or in front of others now. And slowly, this rebuilt myself esteem and confidence until one day I came to one of those full circle moments. 25 years later... back in my college town in that same damn Ramada Inn.
I had booked the hotel unknowingly for a girls weekend. It had new name and new owners so with out even realizing, I booked the exact same hotel I had worked decades earlier. When I walked into check in the sense of Deja Vu was unreal. I honestly had completely forgotten about that hotel until it all came rushing back. Memories of that shutdown girl, so full of fear and so in need of validation, so desperate for love – she was only a memory now. One I had almost completely forgotten about who now stared at me like a ghost. She was mezmorized by me.
I was meeting the one friend from those college days who stood the test of time. As the years passed, her integrity and faith proved to be such a God send to me. The Lord helped us to renew our friendship in recent years. And we planed to meet back for a girls weekend at our old Alma Matter.
Our night out would culminate back at this old haunted hotel where would ya believe it... a live band was playing. So much of our college days were spent as Band Aids. Listening to live music was our favorite past time back them. (Second was frisby golf)
Back then I was always just listening. But that night, my dear friend was insistent that I sing with the band.
She had never really seen me perform. We never lived in the same city since those college days. I was always traveling. And when we got to hang out, I wasn't working so I wasn't performing.
So she truly had never seen this shy girl actually perform, though she's heard me talk of it often.
Now the band felt differently, especially when I requested Hotel California. I've since learned that this is the #1 Rock n Roll song of all time! And it's just the song that came to my mind, with out thinking too much.
ProTip Sidenote – this is always one of the hardest things for spontaeous collabs, coming up with the song. Good to have a short list that you are always ready to perform. Cliche songs that everyone knows are best.
SO maybe they thought it cliché. And to be fair, at that point in a girl's weekend, where we are reliving our college days, I didn't exactly seem like a serious musician.
Another ProTip Sidenote: I do know what it's like to be working at a gig, (one that you want to keep) and having to deal with drunk idiots who will empty the room with bad one song.
I began to feel that familiar timidity. It all came rushing back, worrying more about the band more than what I felt called to do. Doubt settign in. Not wanting to be too pushy, just wanting to go along to get along, lay low, stay out of the limelight. Lyndol of the Ramada Inn seem to inhabit me, possess me again.
But my friend wasn't having it. She was unrelenting. She tipped them so much $$$. She called out Hotel California in between every song.
Until finally, when no one was left in the lobby, they called me up.
And it all came full circle in this Haunted Hotel of memories I sang with out holding back even 1% - the way this song had afforded me a glimps only 30 years earlier at the High School Drama Wrap Party.
No fear, no self-consiousness, no shyness – nothing held back from my Creator AT ALL. It was Lyndol of the Ramada meets Professional Musician Lyndol and we “exorcized the demons”!
My self-esteem completely repaired. My Spirit Whole, after many long years of fighting off those demons that never want to see us align with God's glory for us.
Life is so strange. Singing the very song Hotel California that opened me up when I was young, in that old Ramada Inn that was such a low point. And all thanks to the encouragment of a friend who relentlessly believed in me the way I had secretly years 25 years earlier in this same place.
It might not mean much to anyone else, but it meant everything to me. The final piece to a puzzle I've been working on since those days.
I didn't consciously line up any of that. The revelation of the weight of the moment hit me afterwards, once again thanks to my friend's insight.
And this is what I want to say here. This is how it happens – this spiritual journey that hopefully you are on. You do the deep, spiritual work day after day, year after year. However it is you are called to do it. But using music as the metaphor, the change is so incremental and so ofter based in complete faith that you don't realize, little by little, year by year, how you've actually pushed a bolder up the mountain. You did the impossible. You've become alive again.
God will give you these full circle moments. So intimately designed for you, so that you know he's never abandoned you. Even when you are at your lowest. Even when you can't feel him there at all, for years and years, decades and decades. We have to keep walking in faith.
That's how hard this journey is...
If you are lucky, you'll have a friend to reflect the creator's love to you. But this is a gift you can't demand, nor expect, nor rely on.
The only relationship that matters is the one between you and Your Creator. And I'll continue to sing His Praises, all the days of my life.
I'm posting the video of this exact full circle moment. My friend actually video'd it and you can hear her cheering me on. Sorry for the quality but I love the authenticity of the moment and it's full of the inspiration you'll need to inspire your spirit...
Are you willing to walk the road the Creator has designed perfectly for you, and to come all the way back to life?
If you are already walking it, may this video be the encouragment you need today to validate the work you are doing... it matters!!! Thank you for walking in Faith!
I just realized I’m releasing this on the Summer Solstice, Strawberry Moon. Once again locking in this Full Circle moment as a new phase of my journey begins… stay tuned.