In Behind the Scenes, we meet JANE ELLEN, a church musician and composer who has overcome personal challenges to create music that speaks to people in the pews. Writing seriously since 1986, Ellen has published 29 compositions and has an unpublished catalog of over 200 works. She resides in Albuqerque.

How do you create music?

I hear a melody in my head, and I become obsessed with it. But once it is on paper, I don't remember the piece anymore. Last year I conducted my children's tune "One Little Child," and I had to learn the music in order to conduct it.

While many composers may subconsciously plagiarize each other, I feel my music is often divinely inspired and comes from a small inner voice in my head.

I understand you compose music despite difficult physical ailments.

I have an undiagnosed neuro-muscular condition. In my family, the joke is that if someone sneezes in Alaska, Jane goes to bed for a week. One doctor suggested I buy a motorized wheelchair. But I'm afraid that once I am in that chair, I would give up. There really is no other choice but to go on. The alternative is to sit and wait to die, and that's not a choice.

Playing the piano is painful, and yet I think pain can give us focus. I only have so much energy, so there is no question of spending my evenings flipping channels on television. I must ask myself how I can best use my energy and talent.

The experience of pain is sometimes reflected in my music. For a woodwind and piano composition, two-thirds of the music was quite frantic but ended with a peaceful chorale. Despite my pain, fear, and frustration, I want to convey the idea suffering will eventually pass.

I find a certain haunting melancholy in some of your text. For example, in "The First Snowfall," I'm struck with how you paint a picture of winter:

You have often asserted that music doesn't have to blatantly evangelize to convey spirituality. Can you elaborate?

Many people have questioned the fact that as a Christian, I write secular works appropriate for school or musical theater. My response is that the Scripture says, "We are to be in the world, but not of the world." How can I allow God to use my music to touch listeners if I restrict or limit the gifts He has given me?

I often find myself praying during a performance of a secular work that God will touch hearts through my music.

Ellen has won eight consecutive awards from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP). She is published by Kjos, Heritage, Shawnee and Myklas.