We’re Janel & Abigail Tardy. Here’s how we’re living deeply.
Abigail: “I felt like there was a fire coming out from the inside of me. It was a powerful night of worship on one of our CSPC Rejoice Youth Choir tours close to a decade ago, and just about every person in the room was in tears. The crying just came out of me- a deep wail. Not sad tears, though. I remember thinking of the two disciples walking on the road to Emmaus after Jesus disappeared from them, saying to each other, ‘Weren’t our hearts burning within us?’ That’s what it was. A burning- and also, at the same time, a kind of lightness. I felt the joy of the Lord, felt secure in Him like I never had, and was hungry for more. I was homeschooled. Had some social anxiety, like a lot of middle schoolers, when it came to joining activities. Didn’t know a single person my first year in the choir. Didn’t have friends yet. But that worship experience on choir tour -it happened every year; the Spirit moving through 80 teenagers like we were one- kept me coming back. I stayed in Rejoice from seventh grade all the way through high school graduation, and it shaped everything that came after. There were nights on tour with chairs set up for prayer, and it wasn’t unusual to see 20 kids praying over each other at once, out loud, without a hint of awkwardness. I used to think, ‘I don’t talk like that in real life. None of us do.’ But Someone bigger than us was moving through that room, and I wanted more. I didn’t know it yet, but that fire was preparing me for what God had ahead over my next few years. There was also something else I noticed on those tours, even as a teenager: I wasn’t just watching my peers worship. I was watching grown adults on our leadership team fall right alongside us, no more composed than we were. That mattered to me. It planted a seed I didn’t recognize yet- a hunger to be discipled by people who’d walked with God a lot longer than I had, not just by people my own age. I wanted to know what that fire looked like 20, 30 years down the road. I just didn’t know yet where I’d find it.”
Janel: “I’m Abigail’s mom. My attitude has always been that whatever the Lord puts in front of you, that’s what you do. So, as I finished my role as homeschool mom right after the COVID pandemic, I started praying: ‘Lord, what’s next for me?’ I’d watched what worship had done in my daughter through Rejoice. And I wanted to build on that- to help Abigail see that the gifts God gave her didn’t have to go out into the world for applause, they could go straight back to Him. So in the fall of 2021, right as CSPC Sanctuary Choir was starting back up after the pandemic, I emailed our choir director Wyley Wilkin and asked if Abigail and I could join together, even though she was still a teenager. Wyley responded, ‘Sure, why not?’ There was another reason I wanted her there, though, beyond the singing- and Abigail just alluded to it (though at the time I didn’t know it was in her heart): I wanted Abigail surrounded by older, seasoned believers who’d walked with the Lord far longer than either of us. As a mom, you can say the truest thing in the world to your kids a hundred times, but it lands differently coming from someone who isn’t obligated to say it. I wanted her to have that. I’ll be honest: I am not a natural singer. That first rehearsal, I sat in the alto section next to people who’d been there for decades, and I was completely lost. Wyley would say, ‘Let’s go to measure 32,’ and count it off before I’d even found the page. I didn’t know what ‘legato’ meant; I couldn’t tell you a single Italian musical term. I remember turning to Abigail afterward and saying, ‘I don’t think I can do this.’”
Abigail: “I didn’t struggle with the music the same way, but I had my own kind of ‘intimidated’ going on. I was by far the youngest person in that room, and the only unmarried one. Rejoice Choir kids would usually visit Sanctuary Choir once a month at most- I was the first one to just stay and be with all these adults, week after week. I felt like some random kid who’d wandered in off the street, and for that first stretch, almost nobody said much to me at all.”
Janel: “It took both of us a couple of months. And then things started to click.”
Janel: “One rehearsal, a few months in, Wyley started rattling off those same terms he always did. But I suddenly realized- I understood him! I could find the measure! And once that fear of falling behind lifted, I could finally worship. I remember standing on the platform thinking: ‘I’m not just part of a group leading the congregation. I am worshiping the Lord myself, too.’ That’s when it became magical to me.”
Abigail: “For me, it happened through the choir members themselves. Once people started asking me questions instead of just wondering who this random kid was, I found my place among the sopranos. And I actually started loving being surrounded by people so much older than me, who had walked with God far longer than I had. It went both directions, too: My mom later told me the older women in the soprano section said having a young person there consistently, not just visiting, blessed them in a way they hadn’t expected. And within about two years, a few other younger singers started showing up and joining as well. Mom and I didn’t set out to start anything like that- we just showed up, and God used that. Around that same time, our family’s connection to a touring ministry called Proclaim! International opened up a completely different door. My dad is a jazz musician and had already toured with them. Mom and I went along on one of his trips as roadies- I was doing algebra homework in the back of the bus while the band played. During the trip, some of the leaders overheard me singing along and told my parents, ‘She’s got a beautiful voice.’ At a concert not long after, I mentioned to one of the founders that I’d love to do a trip like that again, even just as a roadie. That night at dinner, he said, ‘You should come to Croatia with us. We’d love to have you sing.’”
Janel: “We prayed on it, and we both felt God moving us toward yes. When we shared the need to raise the funds with our CSPC Sanctuary Choir family, one single person covered the entire trip -several thousand dollars- within a day.”
Abigail: “A couple of years later, on a Proclaim! trip through Scotland, I was the female lead vocalist, singing alongside a man who carried most of the lead songs. But partway through the run, he lost his voice completely. The night before our final concert, they asked me: ‘Can you carry the whole show?’ Talk about going into full panic mode! I was cramming, trying to learn his songs during intermission. But when I stepped onstage, I remember praying, ‘Lord, this is Yours. Go.’ Honestly, I don’t remember most of what happens when I perform- it’s like God takes over the space where my nerves usually are; He’s the main One I sing for anyway. Somehow, I got through every song. People in the crowd never knew that was the first night I’d sung half of what I sang.”
Janel: “That night reminded me so much of my own first choir rehearsal, except in reverse. When we are weak, He is strong.”
Abigail: “That same trip, during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, our team performed the same free concert every night for a week, using the shows to open conversations about faith with total strangers. Multiple people came to know the Lord that week, just through conversations after the music ended. One man kept coming back every single night. He was living rough on the streets, and the first night, he wanted nothing to do with any of it- almost feral, saying, ‘I don’t want to hear it.’ But he kept returning- mostly for the free coffee and food, at first. But by the final night, he was fully locked into the show. And by week’s end, people from the local church were exchanging numbers with him, inviting him to lunch, inviting him to church that Sunday. He came.”
Janel: “You don’t get to witness that kind of thing very often- watching someone move from hostile to hopeful within the span of a few days. We got to plant something, but it was young people from the local church carrying it forward.”
Abigail: “In salvation, you’re rarely the one who takes someone all the way from A to Z. Sometimes you just get to move them from A to C, and someone else -maybe someone younger or older than you- picks it up from there. Being part of that chain, in either direction, is a huge privilege.”
Abigail: “Alongside Sanctuary Choir and Proclaim!, we’ve also served with KnoxCAM (Knoxville Christian Arts Ministries). KnoxCAM uses drama the same way we use music with Proclaim! That’s meant stepping into roles that stretch me completely outside my comfort zone. (I’ve played a demon-possessed girl being delivered in the story of Paul and Silas; nothing about that comes naturally to me!) I still get anxious every single time. But over these last six years, God has used every one of these moments -the choir, Proclaim!, KnoxCAM- to teach me the same lesson, over and over: I am not performing for the crowd. I’m performing for an audience of One. Even if I think I’ve botched something completely, what He wanted to happen through it still happens. That was never up to me anyway.”
Janel: “It comes back to obedience and trusting God. For me, if I had trusted only my own comfort in those first overwhelming months of choir, I would have missed everything God had for Abigail and me since: the deepened worship, Proclaim!, KnoxCAM, watching my daughter step into a strength that was never hers alone to begin with. Whatever season God calls you to, there is beauty waiting on the other side of obedience. Be still and know that He is God.”
Abigail: “Even telling this story together, that pattern hasn’t stopped. My mom made a point of insisting I share my perspective on our story in my own words, even when I told her everything I said would sound dumb compared to her reflections. ‘Your experience as a younger person,’ she told me, ‘will speak to another younger person in a way mine can’t.’ I think that’s why they call it a ‘walk’ with Christ. We’re not perfected yet.”
Janel: “Not even close. But He used a donkey once. He can use us, too. It started with a lightness Abigail felt as a teenager on a worship night she couldn’t completely explain. Years later, that same fire has carried both of us onto stages in Knoxville, Croatia, Scotland, and elsewhere- but all, still, for an audience of One.”