The Sound of Music

The Sound of Music

By Lance Ingram

Holding an acoustic guitar and grinning ear-to-ear, Stephen Wright is giddy as he welcomes students to the Baptist Student Union.

Wright has been leading worship at the BSU for the past two years and it’s obvious that he loves what he does.

However, Wright encounters a struggle every time he steps on stage to play guitar and sing, he was born deaf in his right ear.

“When my mom was pregnant with me she had Cytomegalovirus or CMV, which was a very fatal disease for pregnant women’s children,” he said. “When she had me, the doctor came up to my mom and said your child isn’t going to make it.”

The doctor told his mother he had a 95 percent chance of dying, and in that 5 percent chance if he lives he had a 75 percent chance of being mentally and physically challenged for the rest of his life. The doctor told his mom she needed to abort and if she didn’t, to start praying.

“My mom, being a very godly woman, didn’t think aborting was right, so she started praying and, obviously, I came out alive,” he said with a laugh. “I made it in that 5 percent chance, a miracle.”

Wright was born without any apparent disorders but when he was seven-years-old he went in for checkups, and the doctors discovered he had 110 percent hearing in his left ear but was completely deaf in his right ear.

Ole Miss Student, Carla Aguilar, performed some tests on Wright’s ears for an audiology class she took last year. She examined his ears and noticed that in his right ear it looked completely normal and there were no obvious signs of deafness.

“When my school heard the news a lot of my friends started picking on me, saying a lot of degrading comments,” Wright said. “They’d come up and say these things to me, so my self esteem was just completely shot, and I didn’t have much confidence in God to the point where I even questioned his existence for many years. “

However during his eight grade year he went to a church camp and said he told God he didn’t want to question him anymore after discovering his deafness.

“God opened me up to Psalms 139:14 which says ‘I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made,” and that’s where I learned that God has made me this way for a purpose and has a plan for me',” Wright said. “It was in that moment I said ‘God, whatever you want to do in my life, do it.’”

Shortly after that, Wright said he had an unexpected desire to learn to play guitar, something he had never done before. That Christmas, without ever mentioning the desire, his parents bought him a guitar.

Wright began learning chords and teaching himself to play guitar by ear. From thence forth, Wright said he had a passion for music.

“Music has a lot of emotional response to it and is where we connect to our beliefs about God with who he is, so that just feeling and being able to connect with God is why I do it,” Wright said. “It’s crazy when you can’t hear it too much because, here’s something I have a passion for but can’t fully hear.”

After discovery a knack for advertising in high school, Wright came to Ole Miss with intentions of pursuing a degree in marketing. However, Wright said God had a different plan for him.

During his first semester at Ole Miss, Wright was approached by Brett Frazier, student minister at First Baptist Church of Batesville, to come lead worship for his youth group.

Only having led worship a handful of times, Wright said he was nervous about the position but accepted it. His first performance was in December 2007, and ever since then he said his passion for it has only grown.

Two years later he began leading the BSU worship band.

“He’s always really great with the crowds and just a natural people-person,” Blake Williams, BSU bassist, said. “You’d never know he was partially deaf by the way he interacts with people.

Despite his success as a musician, Wright said that his deafness is still something he struggles with daily.

“Any noise that comes out of my guitar I can’t hear, so really I’m playing my guitar by muscle memory,” he said. “A lot of the time it makes me doubt myself as a musician because I’m working with guys who can hear everything but I can’t, so it really gets me down sometimes.

However he said his joy in performing comes from his salvation to Christ.

“It’s really miraculous how God has been using me in the fact that I’m deaf and in my weakness he’s made it a strong point that he wants to use me,” he said.

Wright will be graduating in May, but will still be leading youth worship at FBC Batesville and said he hopes to be able to be full time there within the next few years while he goes to seminary.

“I know that I’m not worthy of the position I’ve been given, but here I am doing something higher than myself and that’s just awesome.”