"As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." Isaiah 55:9
In the fall of 2014, I started on an incredible journey. At the time, I was oblivious to what God was doing, but that didn't stop Him from working in my life none-the-less. :) In order for this all to be put into proper perspective, I'll have to take you back a few years. Quite a few, actually. :) Ever since I was really little, I've been energetic, creative, and just plain ole' different from my other siblings. The way I looked at life was different from the way everyone else seemed to look at life. I took everything very literally, which caused myself and my parents quite a bit of trouble (especially in school ;). When I was about 8, my mom started teaching me piano. She herself took music when she was in school and believed that piano was the basis of learning music in any form. So she wanted to make sure we had a foundation in that before we headed off into any other musical pursuits. :) To say that I disliked piano would be an understatement. Almost every lesson ended in tears and frustration. "Why can't I just listen to you play the song first and then try it?!" Perhaps my mom didn't realize it at the time, but, I play by ear. Reading notes has always been a struggle for me. But if you let me listen to the melody (and heaven forbid you give me sheet music) and I'll be just fine. :) Now, looking back, I'm thankful she forced me to read notes as it has come in handy. But at the time I was very frustrated. As I continued to grow, my dad, who, by the way, is very attentive to his children and their different interests, tried buying me all sorts of things to put my creativity to use. This included a computer program that makes cards, another one that was an advanced painting program, florist books, a real violin, and even an easel with real paints and canvases. After only a short time I would become disinterested. I always felt bad that he was trying to bless me and invest in my interests but I never had the patience to stick with them. Rolling ahead a few years, I'm now about 15 and my mom tells me she won't "force" me to take piano lessons anymore! Wow. What great news! So you would think. ;) But I had secretly started being more interested in piano. The tears were few and far between lessons now. And I was discovering something. I could compose music. And not just the instrumental part- the words too. I made my first song when I was about 13. It was inspired by my dear Aunt Amy who had cancer at the time. The Lord used that cancer to bring her home to Him. It was a short song, but a song none-the-less. :) So, when my mom told me I didn't have to take piano anymore I was partially excited but considered asking her to teach me a little more. After all, the more progressed I was in playing the piano, the more progressed my music could be. :) But I ended up deciding that I'd just play around with the different books we had and learn the songs I wanted to learn. I liked it better that way. :) Speed up to this past fall, the fall of 2014. Less than a year from this time, I would be graduating from High School. Wow! How exciting! But at the same time I wondered where the Lord wanted me to go next? There were a few different options I had, but the Lord made it clear to me that they were not where I was supposed to go. And so I wondered once again, where a place was that God could use my unique self to bring glory to Him? For all these years I had been creative but I hadn't been able to find an outlet where I could use this for Christ's praise. Sure, I had preformed with my family, singing and ministering at local places, and that was all great! But what was it God wanted me to do with the free time I'd have after graduating!? So, as I was saying, it is the fall of 2014. And on the radio, I kept hearing this advertisement talking about AMTC. Of course, I'd never heard of it before, but every time the ad came up, I found myself stopping to listen. What was it the advertisement had said? "Actors, Models, and Talent for Christ". A place to use your talent for Christ. This had my attention, but only slightly. I doubted that there could ACTUALLY be a company that was TRULY about Christ and promoting Him. "Probably just another one of "those" kind of mediocre "Christian" companies," I thought. I think I ended up praying about it and looking them up, but in my head it didn't seem possible that one could glorify Christ by becoming famous. So I put it in the back of my head and kind of pushed it out of my thoughts for awhile. About a month went by and I was talking to a friend of ours. I asked how her children were doing and she told me one of her daughters was getting ready to try out for this thing called....."AMTC". Wow, Lord.....are you trying to show me something here? After that conversation, AMTC was in my thoughts again. Not on the fore-front of my mind, but it was there. :) You think a girl would take a hint, but I guess I'm rather stubborn. ;) It took one last confirmation for me to wake up and take action. My parents were driving through NC, and my dad saw a billboard for AMTC. You see, I hadn't told my dad yet about AMTC because I had already decided in my mind that it wasn't worth looking into. So he had no idea what it was. He told my mom to look it up on her smartphone and he got enough info on it to think it would be something I might be interested in. So when they got home he looked kind of excited and he said, "Hey Lexi, while we were driving though NC, guess what I saw. It was a billboard for this thing called...CMTA....MACT...." and I was kind of like, "Yeeeahh......you mean AMTC?" And he looked at me like, "What? How do you know about it already!" And I was like, "Goodness, gracious, the Lord sure has my attention now! This is the THIRD time this "AMTC" thing has come up!" So my dad encouraged me to look and see when their upcoming auditions were and to see if I could find one that wasn't too far from where we live. I found one scheduled for February 7th, 2015 only 2 1/2 hours from where we live. That was a week after we were planning on getting back from a visit to NE. Perfect! And since the audition was in the Baltimore, MD area, we were only about 30 minutes from my grandparent's house! Wonderful! It couldn't have worked out any better. So I signed up for the audition. The singer/songwriter category. I was scheduled to be there at 1pm on February 7th, 2014. A Saturday. Because I was a singer/songwriter I was allowed to bring either a keyboard or a guitar to accompany myself. And here is where the Lord shines through once again. Only a few months before, we hadn't owned a keyboard. We had a piano (which I love ;), but no keyboard. But it seems the Lord was a step ahead of us once again. Back in the fall (before I had really considered AMTC), I started trying to transfer my songs into sheet music. My friend of 7 years, Jaime, also played piano and was encouraging me to make my songs on sheet music so she could play them better. This, among other things, encouraged me to do so. I discovered that if I had a keyboard I could connect it to the computer (via a midi cable) and play my song while a computer program translated it into sheet music! It sounded much easier than my trying to click each of the notes into being on this computer program. :) So I started looking for keyboards. I didn't need anything fancy- just something to start with. Then, while talking to a friend at church, he mentioned that they had a keyboard they hardly ever used. And me being the outgoing person I am, was audacious enough to ask if maybe I could buy it from him. He said he could do better than that: he'd give it to me! Praise be to the Lord who provides! And I just said all of that to prove that before I even knew I would need a keyboard for AMTC, and really before I had even considered AMTC, Jesus provided me with one. Crazy how God works! Thus, I began practicing a Christmas song I had made called, "Why We Worship." I wasn't sure how it was all gonna work out, or even what exactly the auditions were for, but I was content to follow the Lord on this and see where He led me. As you probably know by now, I was looking for a way to use what Jesus has blessed me with to bring glory and honor back to Him. My life verse speaks of this: "He must increase, but I must decrease." John 3:30 Whatever I could do, where-ever the Lord wanted to use me, I was cool with it. I just wanted to know WHERE it was I could be used! I wasn't nervous about this whole thing because I knew that if the Lord wanted me there, He'd make it happen. If not, then I trusted He had somewhere else better for me. :) I was just along for the ride. And so my journey of faith began.
~Alexis Noel
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