Sunday, September 8, 2013 5:30AM It still feels like summer here in Texas today. But September's promise is the cooling of the temperatures and I'm sure it will happen by month's end. It is definitely not a lazy day for the Burchill clan. Up at 5AM my sweet husband has already gone to work. He wants to make sure each detail of his portion of Sunday morning services is as organized and ready as it possibly can be so that it is easy for the volunteers and smooth sailing when the music starts to play. God shaped Tom like that.... concerned with musical excellence and serving others. We've alread ..read more

2nd day of school.... I'm on a search for joy in life. The following thoughts have brought me a great deal of joy lately. Let me explain.... I truly believe that everything is God's so everything is at its most essential level, sacred. I think we humans like to divide things into categories. There is secular music and then there is sacred music. There are vocational Christians and then there are Christians who work in the secular world. But if I am a Christian and dedicating my life to follow Jesus and bring God glory, then wouldn't any music I create, at its core, be sacred? By the same rea ..read more

Since I was five years old this day has been my own personal new year's day. The first day of school is always a new beginning. This is when I choose to make my resolutions and my determinations to make this year better than the last. On that first day of kindergarten many years ago, I was a young girl concerned that my new dress and my new hair cut looked just right for that first impression I would be making on my new teacher and my new friends. My mind was filled with mixed emotions. On the one hand, I was super excited to be beginning the great unknown (to me) journey of being a kindergar ..read more

Birthdays, Aging and the Blessing of Music Happy Birthday to me! I’m in a new decade now and I remember being a teenager thinking that my current age is SO OLD! Now that I am here it doesn’t seem that old at all.  I still have a lot of the same teenager dreams I’d like to achieve. However, as Joni Mitchell so brilliantly stated, “they’ve lost a little grandeur coming true”. I have to fit my writing and practicing in between my teaching job, lesson plans and grading papers. The key is to still fit it in. I also take more naps now and I had an appointment with my oncologist to “celebrat ..read more

Birds are singing outside in my yard. I hear them when I wake up in the morning, I hear them when I walk in the yard, I hear them as I go into the laundry room (because the window is open out there.) I hear them as I drive to the store. ( There are literally hundreds of birds singing as they sit on an electrical wire in front of the Target near my house.) I am hearing birds all during the day because it is spring.  If you've read my earlier blogs you know that the birds are my reminder that God loves me even when it seems that nothing is working out like I had hoped or planned. They remind ..read more