It’s true. I can not deny it. It started when I was but a child. I am a junkie. And it shows when you shuffle my iPod. Duran Duran. Third Day. Journey. Francesca Battistelli. Elvis Presley. Gary Chapman. Hall & Oates. Cece Winans. Rosemary Clooney. Rich Mullins. Whitesnake. Tenth Avenue North. I could go on. I love the beat of a fun drum. The pulse of a driving guitar. The tickling of the ivories, even if they are electric.

Once, I would have told you it didn’t matter what I listened to. And when I was younger, that may have been true. However, two things happened. Maybe three. 1) For the most part, I don’t like country. Yes, I grew up in Wyoming. Yes, I live in Nashville. Go figure. 2) I became a Christian. 3) I got married.

The first two are pretty self-evident. You will find very little country on my iPod. Or in my CDs. Or in my cassettes. Or even in my LPs. (Yes, I still have LPs. For that matter, I still have a couple 8tracks, but that’s another blog.) There are the occasional hits or artists, but mostly, I’m a no country zone. Number 2 we will come back to.

Number 3 is where I learned much about me. My loving hubby also has a wide taste in music, only his taste is very different than mine. He will listen to anything that is hip, just to see what other people like about this or that. And that drives me a little bit crazy. He also will listen to instrumentals, which I can do for a little while, but I get bored. He also likes foreign music. Namely Japanese anime music. And this is where I realized something deep within the heart of me:

I am not a music junkie. I am a word junkie. I should have known this to be the case… I was the child that sat by the tape player and stopped and wrote down every word and then played again and wrote down more before the lyrics were included. Once that became the norm, I read EVERY WORD to EVERY SONG.

When I became a Christian, what was being said began to really matter to me. Not just lyrically, but what the overall message was. Was it hopeful? Was it glorifying man or Christ? Give me a good story with a draw to who Christ is, and I was hooked! Give me a song I can’t understand, and I’m OUT. And if it translates to talking about princesses and pudding… I’m gone.

I find myself now introducing music to my kids… yes, I still play the stuff I grew up with, but when there is no life in the words, I’m finding less and less life in the music. I find myself starting songs for them and then saying… ugh… next… I find I go back to the ones with really great lyrics more than the ones I once found to be a “fun” song.

I guess even a junkie can change.