Today I want to introduce y’all to a dear friend of mine, Tara. She just graduated from Catholic University of America with a degree in vocal performance. I first met her through a bible study I ran with another friend in the music school at CUA, and ever since she started coming to our weekly meetings I’ve been so inspired by Tara’s strength of faith and trust in the Lord.
The concept of the Lord as a shepherd is one that Tara holds dear to her heart.
“Psalm 23 is one of my favorite chapters of the Bible, and I repeat the verses to myself often throughout the day, asking myself ‘How am I allowing the Lord to shepherd me today?’.”
This example of the Lord as a shepherd shines through Tara’s life.
So many of us find that our spiritual lives really take off during high school or college. But there are still a good number of those whom the Lord blesses with a strong faith during childhood, and Tara is one of those people.
“Eight [years old] was a big year for me in terms of personal and spiritual growth, for whatever reason,” Tara told me in our interview. “That was the time when a lot of things started clicking in my mind and my heart. I started taking more ownership of my life and my decisions and my interests. Along with that, I discovered this passion that I had for the arts and for music - particularly for singing - and I really wanted to hone in on that.”
This love for the arts very quickly became associated with God and spirituality in Tara’s mind. “Choir was immediately a very spiritual experience for me, because the very first choir that I joined, the first formal singing that I ever did, was for my parish at the time. So I had an immediate association of music and singing, and though I wasn’t having this thought consciously at the time, I think subconsciously I was also associating beauty with God. That connection between those things was just growing stronger and stronger from my active participation and my love for what I was doing. Because of that, from a young age, I knew that I wanted the rest of my life, in one way or another, to be filled with the beauty of the arts.” And though Tara had no idea what that would look like, she knew that the arts would play a major part in her life.
Two years after she joined her church’s choir, Tara began to sing with a local children’s choir. At first, her experience with them was amazing. But when a traumatic event occurred at her first concert with them, Tara faced a new chapter in her story: anxiety.
“When kids would be getting together for playdates, I would get in the car and go to my psychologist,” Tara said, joking that it was her after-school activity. She describes this period of life as one of the most defining and difficult experiences of her life. “It was really hard, not only because of the nature of anxiety and what I was experiencing at a very young age, but also, because I so closely associated music and God, it really affected my spiritual life a lot. I feel very fortunate that my faith grew stronger from the experience rather than weaker, because I think there was a great possibility that I could have lost my faith.”
But, as Tara says, the Lord shepherded her through this experience, which lasted from the time she was ten until she was twelve, and her faith grew even stronger. “I found myself more and more during that time turning to God constantly. I just knew somehow that He knew exactly what was happening to me, and exactly what I was feeling and experiencing. He was right there experiencing it with me, and He had not abandoned me, and something was going to come out of this eventually. So I just clung to Him more during that time in my life than I’d ever before.”
Finally when she was twelve, Tara turned a corner in her journey with anxiety. She believes that because her anxiety was triggered through something that happened during a musical experience, God was able to use music to help heal her. “I just understood innately that there must be some quality of the divine in music, because in spite of everything that I had experienced, when I was listening to music and involving and immersing myself in singing, I knew that there was some kind of spark of divinity in that. So I think God really used that to help heal me from everything I had experienced.”
She added that part of her goals in life are to help others through the gift of music.
“I was able to experience the power of music and I was able to experience God through music in a very direct and personally impactful way. If I have the opportunity to give that gift to someone else through either sharing my story and my experience, or through sharing my music, then I can think of no greater honor than to be able to do that for someone else, to be an instrument of God in that particular way.”
It’s no surprise, then, that Tara decided to study singing in college. She sees every time she performs as a spiritual experience, and as a blessing and gift from God, since for so long she was not able to do so as a result of her anxiety. Some of the most powerful spiritual experiences she had in college with music were her involvement in the annual Christmas Concert for Charity held at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. “Getting to sing in the Basilica is such an incredible privilege, and to have it broadcast on EWTN, too, made me feel like it was a concrete way of fulfilling the mission that I think God has lined out for me. I was using music as a means of spiritual outreach and hopefully healing and impacting people who hear and watch that performance through EWTN. On a personal level, just getting to be in that space, in a choir, which was my first musical love, singing about the birth of Jesus, my homeboy, my Savior. My favorite part of the Christmas concert this past year was getting to look up at the Trinity dome and see Mary, a huge depiction of Mary, surrounded by gold mosaic tiles, standing there, watching me sing about the birth of her Son, proclaiming His goodness and love to everyone who’s listening. It was such a privilege to sing in that space and to know that Jesus and Mary were looking down on me.”
Tara finds great inspiration in the Blessed Mother, calling her the “greatest example of truly fulfilling God’s call to holiness.”
“I have often prayed and meditated on how scary the moment of the Annunciation must have been for Mary, to be young, betrothed, and suddenly told that she will bear the Son of God. In this light, I find the Magnificat so much more striking. Even despite her human fears and uncertainties, Mary praises God from the very core of her being. I try to live out the words of the Magnificat every single day, in all that I do. The words of this prayer have transformed seemingly mundane, day-to-day tasks into moments that God is actively inviting me to choose holiness.”
To transform our daily tasks into invitations to holiness. Wow. Amen! This is one of the reasons I am constantly inspired by Tara, because it is so clear in the way that she lives out her life that she is in constant pursuit of holiness, down to the small choices she makes and the interactions that she has with others.
Tara is currently working as a waitress while she saves up to do her masters’ degree in music. She admitted that she finds it frustrating in many ways, but she also feels that the Lord is shepherding her even in the details of her job. “I see a lot of good - Divine good - coming out of it. Despite it being very hard, and struggling with a lot of aspects of the job, I get to interact with people constantly throughout my shift. That’s what I’m being paid to do. Even if it’s just taking people’s food and drink orders, being able to do that with a smile, and to give them the courtesy of being polite, and addressing them by their name, and hopefully providing them with good service and a good meal - that might be the highlight of their whole day. It’s impossible to judge the impact that you’re having when the interactions are so brief, and based around something as basic as food, but at the same time, you never can judge what people are going through and experiencing, and so approaching that with the mindset of ‘God has guided me to this job, He has guided me to work on this day, on this specific shift, at this specific section, with these specific tables, so that I can have a positive impact, on these specific people who I’m going to be serving today. So I might get tired and it’s hot and I don’t like wearing a mask in 90º weather, and you know, someone might spill their drink on me or ask me to get refills 17 times, but that’s a service God is calling me to perform with love, and with a smile, and to bring a little bit of His love for that person to them in this moment that I’m handing them a margarita.’”
I asked Tara if she had any advice for young Catholics trying to live out their faith, and her response was truly golden, particularly considering the turbulence of this year so far. “To my fellow young Catholics, my biggest piece of advice is not to let anybody or anything else define your Faith for you. The world needs saints from all backgrounds and all walks of life, with different passions, different perspectives and different gifts. Some people are called to get into apologetic debates on social media, while others are simply called to lead by example and make the beauty of the Faith known to others. Some people will be called to boldly acclaim the Faith in their workplace, while others will be called to live out their vocation in the home. All are equally valuable. The important thing is that we all keep actively seeking what is good, true and beautiful, and encouraging each other along the journey to Heaven!”
Tara hopes that through her story, you see the boundless love and mercy of God, and how all difficulties in life, no matter how small, can be used to prepare us for Heaven if we unite our sufferings with God. And through Tara's witness to the tender care of God, it’s my hope that you, friend, will be inspired to allow the Lord to shepherd you through all that you walk through in life.
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