The Lessons I learned from Jordan Sparks and Brittney Spears

Hi all, here is something I wrote many years ago. The Lessons I learned from Jordan Sparks and Brittany Spears By Anna Anthony The scene outside my kitchen window was one of tranquility and peace. It was the beginning of Fall and already the leaves on the trees glowed like red flames against crisp blue sky. A squirrel jumped from one branch of a tree to another and scurried away. Farther away, on the bridge two people in jackets walked along. But the peace of the scene outside didn’t touch my heart. I had done something stupid the previous day and could not get over my mistake. Usually I am very energetic and go about my routine with joy and enthusiasm. However, that particular day nothing in the world could make me happy. Although I had asked God for forgiveness, peace still eluded me, not because I felt that God had not forgiven me but because I was still mad at myself for making the wrong choice. I wanted what I had done to be undone. I wanted to go back in time and completely erase what had happened. I wanted to know from God why I did what I should not have done. Why did it happen at all? Why did I make a poor choice? I was a mature Christian and a mother of two growing boys determined to set an example of what it was to walk an authentic Christian life to my children. Why did I do wrong? I went about my chores mechanically when I suddenly heard the melodious voice of American Idol star Jordan Sparks flowing out of the radio. Now you’re feeling more and more frustrated And you’re getting all kind of impatient Waiting we live and we learn to take one step at a time. There is no need to rush It’s like learning to fly Or falling in love One step at a time Soon that song was over and another song came on but the chorus One step at a time reverbated in my brain. It was as though God was telling me through Jordan Sparks that I would not learn all the lessons I needed to learn over night, all at once. Spiritual maturity was a process and a journey. Mistakes were inevitable. That took me through a journey down memory lane. I remembered how my son Jeremiah, now 13, first learned to walk. He started trying to walk a few days before he turned one. First he would crawl close to the sofa or the coffee table and then he would try to stand up by holding on to the sofa. Still holding on he would take the first wobbly steps, awkward but cute beyond description. Then he would fall down on the floor. Dazed, he would stay on the floor for a few minutes but soon he would be back up on his baby legs taking more tentative steps. The day he turned one, Jeremiah was surrounded by a bunch of kids and suddenly Jeremiah cruised forward in a momentum lead by the kids. It was not clear to me if Jeremiah was actually walking or gliding. In the days that followed, he would keep trying. Standing up, holding onto something, the sofa or my finger and then he would let go and venture out on his own only to fall again, and get back up again and try the same routine. And suddenly when I wasn’t even noticing he started to walk, then walk fast and then faster and then run and jump and now he was doing track and basketball in junior high. I remember how excited I felt when I first noticed how Jeremiah took his first cute wobbly steps. I was always there close beside him to pick him up when he fell down and then encourage him to try again. His goal was my goal and when he took a few steps along I was the happiest mommy in the world. I remembered how I taught my younger son Josh to read when he was around 4. We started with the sounds of alphabets, then we moved onto early reader books with just one word per page, and then to books with a couple of sentences per page. I remembered making my own flash cards for Josh by cutting little squares with construction paper and writing words on them with different phonetic sounds. I knew the things in Josh’s world and the things Josh liked and I knew I could motivate him by teaching him to read the words that were the names of the things he loved. Josh’s progress was slow. It was one sound at a time and one word at a time. But by the time Josh was 5 years old Josh was a very fluent reader reading beyond his grade level. And to date he has a way with words, being the official language police of our family, correcting us every time we make a mistake in the way we construct a sentence, thinking about the etymology and language of origin of words. I think that is the way God programmed us to learn. Everything happens one step at a time whether it was learning to read, walk or walk in accordance to God’s ways. And just as it delighted me to watch my babies learn to walk and learn to read it probably delighted God to watch me learn to walk in His ways. It did not bother me when Jeremiah fell down while trying to walk and it did not bother me that Josh could not read the Chronicles of Narnia right after he learned all his alphabets. I knew they would reach their goal-eventually, that I had to be patient and gentle and just help them along the way. God is like that, wanting us to mature from baby food to solid food , one step at a time. He is the God who wants us to mature and prosper in all things and be in health, just as our soul prospers. 3John:2 … Because the Bible said the righteous man falls down seven times but rises up again and again. Just as falling was so much a part of Jeremiah learning to walk and learning a little bit at a time was so much a part of Josh learning to read, making mistakes was so much a part of me trying to walk in God’s ways. The bigger sin would be to not accept God’s forgiveness and get up and start trying again. Perseverance is an integral part of the qualities that help a person enter the Kingdom of God. There is a verse in the Bible that says that the doors of the kingdom of God are wide open to people who add with diligence stuff like perseverance to their faith. “But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue, knowledge, to knowledge self control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to Godliness, brotherly kindness and to brotherly kindness love.” …”for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting Kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” Our perseverance in things that matter to God, shows God that we are serious about following God. “Failure,” it is said, “is a stepping stone to success” and without the stepping on the stepping stone of failure can we reach success? Another adage tells us that we learn from our mistakes. Is it possible to learn without making mistakes? Personally I prefer to learn without making mistakes but I guess when there are mistakes in our journey of learning the heartache that accompanies the mistake makes the eventual success taste that much sweeter. In God’s scheme of things perseverance was important. If faith was the evidence of things unseen, then perseverance was the same as faith in action because we would not persevere in something if we did not have faith that we could accomplish our goal, whatever it may be. Perseverance is the same as hope because we would not persevere if we did not have hope that our goal could come to pass, and perseverance is the same as being passionate because we cannot persevere if we do not desire something passionately and it was the same as trying our best to never fail because we would not persevere if we did not mind failing. Love never fails, the Bible says, and I think true love always perseveres no matter what our love was toward, whether it was toward a person, or an activity such as singing or writing or gymnastics. To do good gymnastics,( ask shawn Johnson), or to be a good parent we need to persevere. If Shawn Johnson gave up on Gymnastics every time she made a mistake we would not have had the good pleasure of watching her and make our Iowan hearts fill with pride every time during the sweltering, flood ravaged summer of 2008. It is unthinkable of what would happen if we give up on our children every time they made a mistake. Or what if our own parents had given up on us when we made mistakes when we were young. To date, I feel a spurt of joy when I hear the Jordin Sparks song. I will always be grateful to Jordan Sparks for singing that song because it made me feel so much better about myself by rewiring my brain to think in productive and positive ways regardless of my failure. Jordan does not know me and I do not know Jordan. Yet, through her music she taught me an important life lesson and made me feel so much better about myself. I am sure there are many other people like me who were encouraged by that song by Jordin. I decided to learn more about Jordan Sparks. When I went to her website I learned that Jordan did not become America’s singing sensation overnight. For several years she was a background singer for Michael W Smith. She worked hard on the technical details of her music. She would have had to be disciplined. The more I thought about and learned about Jordan Sparks the more I admired her. And that was the basis for another lesson that Jesus wanted to teach me. But because Jordan worked hard at the talent she had, and made sure she did not “hide it under a bushel” she was able to help a hurting person like me and make an impact on my life. This made me think about all the music I had listened to over the years and how each artist through their song was used by God to speak something to me that I needed to hear at the time. Suddenly I felt grateful to all the singers whose music I enjoyed… Franceska Battistelli, Barlow Girl, Joy Williams, Super Chick, Laura Story, Rascal Flat, Switch foot etc. What would have happened if these people did not sing? Suppose they chose to cook which is not their talent, instead of choosing to write and sing music! Or suppose they were all too lazy to get up from their beds in the morning and write a song or make the tune to a song. And if they were then when I switched on my radio I would have only static to listen to and that would make my day go very bad. I am glad those people worked hard on their talents. Then it hit me that God gives us our talents in order that we may show the love of Jesus to people who are hurting in the world. Our talents if used well are the lamps that bring light and beauty into this world. And in fallen world with so much darkness certainly there is need for beauty and grace and wisdom. And that was why it was important to work hard at developing our talents faithfully so that it can be used by God. Every talent needs developing by application and hard work, just because we are gifted does not mean that right away we can be used by God. We need to work hard at our gifts. In the Bible Jesus said the parable of the talents, Go All my life my dad had been telling me that writing was my gift. For a long time I thought it was wishful thinking by my dad. My dad was a person who thought anything and everything I did was wonderful. If I painted a picture the next thing I know it was custom framed and put up in the living room. If I ran fast it became the thing that my Dad boasted about to friends and family. So I had to believe that my Dad was biased in believing that I could write well. I wondered about the purpose of my writing. When I came to the United States 11 years ago I did my MA in Creative Writing. Once I remember the professor saying that the bookshelves of this world were groaning with weight of books no one ever read. Why should we add to the weight of books noone read. It was a rhetorical question but it became my excuse for not developing what my dad told me my gift was. But now I know better. Songs are made up of words and books are made up of words. Both had impacted my life. There were many times in my life that books and music were a life saver. Through books I learned about the lives of other people, I learned about people who are different from me and lived in places very different from mine. Through books I had learned about different subjects about how life used to be in different periods of times in history. Through understanding the challenges people face and the choices they made the darkness and mystery of life has sometimes been unfolded to me. I learned more about the person who changed and saved my life from a very important book called the Bible. Many times in my life when I have felt confused or in despair books have brought clarity, hope when I felt despair, courage when I felt scared and strength when I felt weak at the complexities of life. The words of God in the Bible are especially magical. If a word was the physical expression of a thought or an idea the word of God were the wise thoughts of a wise God; they were the perfect thoughts of a perfect God; they were the holy thoughts of a holy God and the pure thoughts of a pure God. They were the faithful thoughts of a faithful God; and the loving thoughts of a loving God. No wonder the Bible says that the word of God was living and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Hebrews 4:12 It was Franz Kafka who said that Literature is like an axe that breaks the frozen seas within the hearts of people. I truly believe that words based on the Bible like the thoughts of God have healing properties, and can change the way our brains process information from the world. They can pour peace into a troubled heart, soothe a hurt one, inspire a dull one, or encourage a dispirited heart. That I decided was what I wanted my writing to do. Yes, with my writing I want to impact the kingdom of God by helping hurting people. But Jesus was not done teaching me about the importance of being faithful with my love for writing. Jesus wanted me to know that when we give of our talents to the world, that we apart from finding a deeper meaning to our lives but can also stumble upon our own salvation. This is how Jesus taught me this lesson. The singer Bebo Norman has written a song called Brittany, I am sorry. The song was inspired when Bebo on a night he could not sleep, ended up watching TV while his family slept. He saw Brittany Spears being carried in a stretcher to a hospital. Bebo was about to change the channel when they showed a close up shot of Brittany’s ashen face. Instead of the crazy singing sensation Bebo saw this hurting broken hearted 25 year old who was struggling and struggling and coming up empty. Bebo could see her as Jesus saw her. That inspired Bebo to write a song of apology for her. I like that song very much and thanks to the song I am praying for Brittany now. I want Jesus to take care of that young woman. I want her to feel the peace, love and joy of Jesus. I am sure many other Christians are touched by the song and are praying for Brittany as well. I am sure Bebo, his friends and family are praying for Brittany as well. Brittany obviously was not a Christian and made many wrong choices in her life. But the one thing she did right was work hard at her musical talent. Thus sharpened her talent brought her into the limelight and she caught the attention of Christians and now through the prayers of many people Jesus would take care of her. Brittany’s gift ushered a way for Brittany to stand before our king Jesus. Do you see a man excel in His work? He will stand before kings.” Proverbs 29:21. “A gift ushers a way for the giver, and ushers him into the presence of the great.” Proverbs Does that mean that if we are just faithful with the talents God has given us, we can come into the presence of our king Jesus. If nothing else we have been faithful and wasn’t faithfulness a quality that Jesus loved. In one of the most arresting scenes in the book of Revelation when Jesus comes back He would appear in all His glory in the clouds and He would have two names written on Him—Faithful and True. Jesus Himself is Faithful and True. If we are supposed to be like Jesus doesn’t it behove that we have to be faithful and true with the talents He has given us. If we were then we would be ushered into the presence of the king. Now I want to be faithful with God has given me by writing my heart out. I want to write the most exquisite sentences through which I can share the truth of the love of Jesus Christ with the hurting people of the world. So when at the end of the day I stand before my king, I have nothing to be ashamed of.