It was the second Sunday of the month, which meant Choir Sunday at Mount Gilead First Baptist. And if you’ve never been, just imagine a church service run like a live taping of a gospel awards show. The lights are a little brighter, the robes are a little crisper, and the ushers, in their immaculate white gloves, move with the solemn importance of secret service agents for the Holy Spirit.
I was in the choir loft, my hair done, my throat coated in honey and lemon, humming my warm-ups under my breath. The pews were fuller than usual. We had visitors from a sister congregation, and a local TV crew was filming a segment on our “Vibrant Intergenerational Music Ministry,” which was a fancy way of saying a camera was in the building. So, naturally, the pressure was on.
I sing soprano. Not perfectly, not with the technical precision of a classically trained vocalist, but with heart. With a tremble. With the kind of raw, emotional edge that makes the old ladies in the front row start fanning themselves and the kids look up from their coloring books. I’ve been told I have a gift. But someone else in that loft, someone who shared my last name, didn’t think so.
My cousin, Chenise. Loud, lean, lip-glossed, and always lurking in the mezzanine of every family moment, waiting to make it about her. She had just come back from “pursuing music in Atlanta,” which was code for being temporarily banned from three local stages after an on-mic altercation at a brunch showcase that ended with a flying mimosa. But now she was back, freshly humbled by the world but not by her own ego, and she had opinions. Big ones.
It started as a whisper. While we were waiting for the processional, Chenise leaned into the altos behind me. “Y’all notice she only joins the choir when there’s a broadcast or a bake sale?” The altos giggled nervously. I ignored it. I’d been warned my whole life not to feed the trolls, especially the ones with a decades-old grudge about a solo you got in the fifth-grade Christmas pageant.
Yes, that’s where this all started. Fifth grade. I was a shy, quiet kid with a surprisingly big voice. Chenise was the loud, confident one who assumed the solo was hers by birthright. When our music teacher, Mrs. Davison, chose me to sing “O Holy Night,” Chenise had a full-blown meltdown in the hallway, accusing me of “stealing her song.” She spent the entire performance in the wings, glaring at me. I hit every note perfectly, but I remember my hands shaking, not from stage fright, but from the sheer force of her jealousy. She never forgave me for it.
Now, years later, as we were lining up for our walk-in, robes flowing, she muttered just loud enough for the tenors to hear, “She ain’t here for Jesus. She here for the footage.” One of the tenors choked on his breath mint. I clenched my jaw and stared straight ahead. Strike one. I still said nothing.
We took our places. The service began. Scripture was read. Announcements were made. And then it was time for our first number: “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.” A soft, fluttery solo opened it. And yes, I was the one singing it. I took my breath. The single spotlight hit the loft. The organ sighed its opening chord. I opened my mouth. And I felt her watching me. Not just watching. Waiting.
I got through the first few lines, my voice gaining strength with each note. I poured all the week’s anxieties, all the quiet prayers, all the unspoken gratitude into that song. It was my offering. Then came the line, “I sing because I’m happy…”
That’s when Chenise let out a sharp, unmistakable snort. A sound of pure, unadulterated contempt. Then, in the sacred quiet between musical phrases, her voice cut through the air, clear as a bell and twice as bitter: “She can’t sing. She just cries loud in tune.”
Heads turned. Whispers rose like steam off hot pavement. One of the ushers audibly gasped. The TV camera, which had been focused on me, wavered. I tried to push through it. I really did. I went for the next note, putting every ounce of strength in my diaphragm behind it, but my voice, ambushed by humiliation, cracked. It splintered into a raw, broken sound. My chest tightened, my lips trembled, and that’s when Chenise laughed. A short, sharp, mocking sound.
She looked directly at Pastor Williams, who was sitting on the pulpit, his face a mask of disbelief, and said, her voice dripping with fake concern, “Why we lettin’ folks up here for attention? I’ve seen her shout harder at a Beyoncé concert than she ever did in this sanctuary.”
The choir froze. The altos looked like they’d been slapped. The tenors didn’t know where to look. The camera panned away from me, focusing on the stained-glass window as if suddenly fascinated by its depiction of the Sermon on the Mount. And then, to cap it all off, Chenise mocked my cracked note out loud, repeating my line in a warbled, baby-doll voice: “I sing because I’m haaaappy…”
I stood there, shaking, the spotlight a hot, accusatory glare. I had half a line left to sing, but the words were swallowed by the ringing in my ears. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run. I wanted to snatch her ponytail off and offer it to the Lord as a burnt sacrifice. But instead, I just tried, shakily, to finish the song. I got out the words, “I sing because I’m free,” my voice a broken whisper.
And then the organ stopped. Dead. A single, final, disapproving clunk of a key.
The elderly organist, Miss Artha Mayfield, 87 years old, the oldest member of our church, legally blind in one eye and known for never missing a single Sunday in 42 years, stood up. She closed her hymnal with a soft, definitive snap, and looked directly at Chenise. “Let me tell you something, baby.”
Everything went still. Miss Artha didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t have to. The authority in that woman’s whisper could part the Red Sea. That church was so quiet you could have heard a collection plate tremble.
She turned her body fully toward Chenise with the calm, cold focus of a woman who had buried three husbands, survived a lightning strike during a tent revival, and once kept playing the organ during an actual fire drill because, as she later said, “The Lord’s music waits for no alarm.” She tapped her hymnal twice, like a gavel.
“The devil can hold a note, too,” she said, her eyes, one cloudy and one clear, locked on Chenise.
The air shifted. Someone in the back went, “Mmm-hmm.”
Miss Artha continued, her voice gaining a rhythmic, sermon-like cadence. “But he don’t sing to heal nobody. He sings to hear himself. You could feel the words move through the room like a sermon in slow motion. “That child,” she pointed a thin, wrinkled finger in my direction, “she might cry when she sings. But them tears have watered my faith more times than I can count. What you bringin’, baby? Just dust and noise.”
Chenise blinked, her perfectly glossed lips parted in shock.
Miss Artha wasn’t done. “You don’t come in here to worship. You come in here to measure. To compare. To compete. But this ain’t no talent show, sugar. This is a sanctuary. And we don’t need judges in the choir loft.”
Half the church gasped. A few people started clapping—full-palm, Lord, help us kind of clapping.
Chenise tried to speak, her mouth opening, but Miss Artha held up that same thin, wrinkled finger. “Let me finish.” The power of that finger alone could have rewritten the Ten Commandments. “You want the spotlight so bad? Take it. Go on. Sing something for us right now. We’ll wait.”
Chenise froze. She looked around at the sea of expectant faces, at the TV camera that had now swung back around to capture her public execution. She couldn’t. And everyone knew it.
“No? Didn’t think so,” Miss Artha said, a sad, knowing look on her face. “Because you know deep down, you ain’t got the oil. You got the talent, maybe. But you ain’t got the anointing.”
You could hear the exact moment Chenise’s ego deflated. Her mouth twitched. Her shoulders slumped just slightly. And Miss Artha, she just sat back down at her organ, opened her hymnal again, and added, as a final benediction, “Some folks come to be seen. Others come to be changed.”
And then, just like that, the organ picked back up, smooth and holy, like butter melting on a warm biscuit. Pastor Williams, who had been watching the entire exchange with a look of profound awe, stepped forward. “Let her sing again,” he said into the mic. “From the top.”
The choir looked at each other, stunned. One of the altos nudged me gently. My hands were still shaking, but then I felt it—a wave of support from the pews, people silently nodding, encouraging me. I took a breath. The music started again. And this time, I sang like I was on fire. My voice was pure, the earlier pain sharpened into a defiant power. I hit every note, clean and clear, with a kind of righteous force that didn’t ask for applause. It earned silence. Reverence. Respect.
Tears streamed down faces in the congregation—not mine this time, but theirs. By the end of the final verse, three ushers were fanning each other. The woman in the front row had thrown her hands up in the air like she’d just gotten saved all over again.
And Chenise? She was sitting down, her shoulders stiff, her face frozen in something between embarrassment and resentment. She had just realized that the show she tried to steal had a script she wasn’t ready for.
It’s been a year since that Sunday, a year since Miss Artha Mayfield became a viral sensation known as “The Organ-icle.” The TV station, realizing they had gold, aired the entire, unedited clip of her takedown. It exploded. The video of her speech, edited with dramatic music, hit millions of views on TikTok. My own second performance of the solo was included at the end of most clips, a triumphant final act.
My life changed overnight. The story was picked up by national news outlets. I was invited to sing at gospel festivals and church conferences across the country. My “crying loud in tune” became my signature, a symbol of authentic, heartfelt worship that people were hungry for. I recorded an EP that, to my astonishment, charted on the gospel billboards. I was able to quit my day job and now I lead worship workshops, teaching people to find their own authentic voice, tears and all. I have a gift, and I’m finally using it without fear.
As for Chenise, her downfall was as public as her attack on me. The viral video made her infamous in our community. Her attempts to restart her music career were met with ridicule. The clip of her freezing when Miss Artha challenged her to sing became a popular GIF. The “flying mimosa” incident from Atlanta was unearthed by internet sleuths, solidifying her image as a bitter, entitled diva. Last I heard from my aunt, Chenise was working a 9-to-5 office job and had deleted all her social media. She never came back to Mount Gilead. The family, who had for so long enabled her behavior, could no longer ignore the truth when it was being played on a loop on the evening news.
And Miss Artha? She became a local celebrity. She still plays the organ every Sunday, her hands as steady as ever. We have lunch once a month. She gives me advice on music and life, always with that same sharp, no-nonsense wisdom. She’s the grandmother I always needed.
That Sunday, I learned something profound. There’s a difference between talent and what Miss Artha called “the oil”—the anointing, the presence, the spirit that moves through you. Chenise had talent, but her voice was hollow because it was only ever in service of herself. My voice, with all its cracks and trembles, connected with people because it came from a place of genuine vulnerability. Chenise tried to silence me, but all she did was give my voice a bigger stage than I could have ever imagined. The best way to answer a critic isn’t to argue with them; it’s to sing so powerfully, so authentically, that their noise is simply drowned out by the beauty of your own song.