Cecilia Leskowicz
I’m the oldest daughter of two devout Catholic musicians, and as a result, three things were the cornerstones of my life from the start: God, music, and my family’s love. I grew up singing alongside my mom as she taught voice lessons, accompanying her & my grandma to daily Mass, playing violin, and happily exploring the high school band room where my dad taught band. After a major concussion when I was ten, I discovered I was missing a disc in my spine and would develop arthritis by the time I was 20 if I kept playing violin seriously. This was how I ended up playing the flute, an instrument I felt pretty apathetic to at first. However, through a series of events, God led me to study flute performance at the Catholic University of America.
At this point in life, I wanted to be an orchestral flutist, badly. Spots in orchestras don’t open up often, so it's really hard to win a position in an orchestra. You have to go through several rounds of auditions, and for major openings, you’re going up against around 200 other flutists (if you even get past the resume round). So I knew I had to work hard, and boy, did I work hard. During my sophomore year of college I practiced between 2-3 hours a day on top of my already-busy days filled with classes & rehearsals, neglecting any aspect of my life that was not flute-related, and I paid the price in all aspects of life.
Cue to my junior year of college. About 4 weeks into the fall semester, I was practicing when 2 fingers on my right hand stopped moving. The next evening I went to the emergency room because I'd lost strength in that hand to the point where I couldn’t even hold a pencil. There I was diagnosed with carpal tunnel; and the doctor, who knew I was studying flute, told me that if I did not take at least 2 months off of playing, my career was over.
I was devastated. Not just because my plans had come crashing down, but, as I found out, flute was my entire identity. I had no idea who I was outside of flute. And so I turned to God. This was how the Lord chose to deepen our relationship, and He began to reveal to me parts of myself I had lost in my pursuit of flute, and even parts of myself that I didn’t even know existed. But far, far most importantly, I began to grow closer to God, spending more time with Him in adoration and even going to daily Mass. It was through this painful injury that He taught me who I truly am: His beloved daughter.
My carpal tunnel dissipated with physical therapy and relearning how my body works (did you know that your shoulder is part of your arm?? I did not until then lol). However, it was replaced with tendonitis in both arms, which has since also faded away, but has also been replaced with constant chronic pain throughout my whole body. So my newest adventure involves trying to figure out what’s going on there! In the midst of all these things, God allowed me to finish my degree in flute performance; and not only that, but He opened the doors for me to do a masters' degree in flute performance and to focus within that on learning to teach flute more holistically, something that I became passionate about as a result of my own flute-related injuries. I will be completing my degree this coming spring, God willing. And after that - who knows? Only God! But I trust Him deeply with my future. He’s given me immense graces to trust that He will take care of me as He's always done. And He has blessed me greatly with an incredible support system of family & close friends who have been there for me throughout all of these trials and challenges, because I could not do it without them.
Sometime during all of this, I felt called to share myself more authentically on social media, and that is how @missionaryofbeauty was born. The rapid growth of my account has been perhaps the biggest surprise of my life so far. If I sit down and think too hard, I question why people choose to follow the slightly-awkward, definitely nerdy me; and sometimes I want to throw my phone out the window because Satan knows how to divide people well on social media, or delete my account entirely because it’s opened me up to a lot of harsh interactions with others. But I also know deep within my bones that this is a way in which God wants me to share my faith. The best part by far about it for me is being able to pray for those who follow my account as well as those who interact with it in some way. I open up a weekly prayer intention box every Sunday, and it is such a gift to be able to carry these intentions to God in my prayer throughout the week. God is so good, friends!! He truly works through our own authentic witnesses in His own, fascinating ways, which are far, far better than our own ways.