I Celebrate Harmony

For as long as I can remember, I’ve enjoyed making music. I have always loved to sing, but not just by myself. I need to find harmony in any song that I’m singing. When I was growing up, my older sisters were in a band. Sometimes, during practice, they would ask me to help find a harmony part in a song. I can’t remember if I was able to help, but I felt very special, being 10- years-old, to be asked to help find harmony in their music.

Later, when I was in junior high, two friends and I loved to sing together. We had a brief moment of small-town fame, appearing on a local TV show, singing our three-part harmony together. I began learning more about how to sing with others, learning that an important part of singing harmony is blending.  Blending means that my voice isn’t sticking out or calling attention to me by myself. My voice part adds to the group’s sound, and our harmony blends to make one beautiful sound.

In my years of recovery over my compulsion to overeat, and my depression, I have had periods of time where I decided to go it on my own. I was still attending my Celebrate Recovery meetings, but I was not enlisting the help of my accountability partners, my friends in recovery who are ready to encourage me.  I was not being completely transparent in my small groups; I was choosing to hide and keep secret the vulnerable and deepest parts of myself. I also was not asking after my accountability partners about THEIR struggles, choosing instead to isolate myself.
I was like a choir singer who decides to sing louder than the rest of her group.  The singer may be out of tune and off-beat, but she stubbornly sings on.

I think of the times my recovery has been on a healthy upswing, and how in those times I am in constant contact with my sponsor and accountability partners, my friends in recovery. We don’t just talk “recovery” to each other; we share light-hearted and fun times together as well as the rough stuff. In 1 Thessalonians 5:11 we are told to "…encourage one another and build each other up…"

This reminds me of my friend Connie, with whom I sang in college and afterwards.  We sang together in quite a few groups; so we intuitive blended in harmony no matter where we were singing. In fact, when we were sitting together, worshipping at church, we would catch ourselves breathing at the same times, and improvising things together that we had not rehearsed.  In the same way, when I am in tune with my recovery friends, my accountability team, we anticipate each other’s needs. More than a few times, a precious friend has unknowingly texted, called or emailed me right in a crucial moment when I needed to hear that word of encouragement.


God has given us each other to make harmony together on this walk.  There are no soloists here. 

Grateful Believer,

Angi