The experts call it “Florence Syndrome”
The actors came to the center of the stage and as the lights dimmed, a song began to play. The young men and women were signing the words to “Different” by Micah Tyler, and tears threatened to fall from my eyes. It was our church’s Christmas play.
Experts call the phenomenon of music making you cry “Florence Syndrome,” but I would beg to differ. If you were to reach down deep and unlock that back closet in corner of a person’s heart, I can almost guarantee you would find a song there.
It amazes me how we relate to music in our own way. The significance of the tune is enough to stop us in our tracks, and away the world drops as we sing every word.
At the beginning of 2013, I began to change my life. I knew I wanted a walk with Christ, but I didn’t know where to start, so I started where it counted. I stopped my pack a day habit, and I quit drinking alcohol all together. I started praying and talking to God in a way that I never had before.
We went to church as children, but our family had never been the “every Sunday” goers. My aunt and uncle invited us to their church and from day one, I felt His presence run over me. It felt like an overwhelming pull. It’s the only way I could ever describe it.
I wrote notes and read the verses at home the pastor named during his sermons. Christianity was all new to me, and often I wondered if I was doing it right.
One morning in November of 2018, I was driving to work with K-LOVE playing on the radio. I had been praying for the Lord to change me into that new woman I had read so much about in the Bible. I want to feel whole again and feel as though I didn’t fall short over and over again in the eyes of the man upstairs.
The verses of a song drifted over me as I pulled up to the red light. “I want to be different. I want to be changed,” said the man on the radio. Tears ran down my face as I continued to listen to these beautiful words that gave me goosebumps and filled my car with the spirit of the Lord.
I understood what He was trying to tell me. This was my journey, and I was going to get it right sometimes, and other times I would falter. This awesome God we serve would continue to love me and walk with me as I learned about Him and His word, and all that mattered was that I was changing.
I took many steps farther after that day. I learned what tithing was, and how much should go to the church. I paid them, and still do, regularly and faithfully. I read my Bible everyday. You wouldn’t believe how blessed we have been.
“Different” was every sense in the word of how I felt hearing that song for the first time. Different was how I felt as I stood outside talking to the pastor of our home church that Sunday evening and telling him the meaning behind the words for me.
I stood there in that night air with a snotty nose, and a lump in my throat as I recalled the way the Lord has blessed us over and over again.
Pastor Danny Williams hugged us and told us he loved us, and you could feel the spirit of the Lord all around us.
I will forever be “Different.”
Romans 12:2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.
