Dana McCarty doesn’t consider herself a particularly meditative person. Instead, she jokes about being a busybody, always moving. Sitting still and praying in quiet — enveloped in the kind of silence often held up as the gold standard of devotional life — has never come naturally.
So she sings instead.
McCarty has been a vocalist with Blacknall’s worship team for nearly all her 15 years at the church, and what started as a casual offer to give “O Holy Night” a try during a Blacknall Dance performance has become one of the most consistent spiritual practices of her life. Not because she planned it that way. God just had a different idea about what prayer could look like for her.
"When you sing, you pray twice," she said, citing a line attributed to Augustine. "There are the words that are being said, but the fact that you're engaging with them through singing is another act of service, or of love or praise [and] adoration to God.”
“[Singing] feels like a way that I can enter into prayer in a way that generally is hard for me to do,” she said.
Hear Dana share more about how music has impacted her connection to God.
Part of what makes it work is a habit started by Blacknall’s Director of Worship & Music Wen Reagan. Ahead of Sundays when Dana sings with the worship band, Wen sends songs so she can slowly immerse herself in lyrics rooted in Scripture. Having the music days in advance allows each song to follow her through the hours of her week.
"It's such a gift to have those words just bathed over my brain throughout the week," she said. "By the time I get to Sunday, I'm sitting in them a little more."
She’s listening in the car. She’s thinking about them while brushing her teeth. Each song becomes an earworm in the best possible way — a tune rolling around in her head, helping her hear God in the music well before stepping behind a microphone to help lead Blacknall’s congregation.
This is the kind of centering that has changed her life. Not a meditative practice, but an accumulation of words she lives with for a few days. By Sunday, she knows the song, but the song knows something about her, too. It’s a transformation that’s quiet and cumulative, allowing music to do what silence couldn’t.
“So many of the words we sing are just directly from Scripture,” Dana said, “and that familiarity with those words and those promises that God has is a way that God tries to get closer to me.”
This story is part of our series that highlights how God impacts our lives: In the transformation we experience through Him and how He invites us into a deeper life of discipleship with Christ.
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