Getting started this morning is incredibly difficult. I can't explain it, but there's something going on in this heart of mine, but it refuses to jump from my heart and my brain to the screen. God is dealing with me, and it's as if I'm running from his heart. Two days ago, I woke up early. I couldn't sleep, so I got up and began to read. I'm reading through a book called He Loves Me by Wayne Jacobsen. It's really opening my eyes to some truths I've run from for so long.
I have grown up in a fantastic home. Mom was a stay-at-home mom who was involved in the lives of my sister and I, though she didn't suffocate us. My sister got into basketball, singing, and softball, while I was involved in piano, saxophone, singing, basketball, softball and soccer. Truth be told, music is the only thing that stuck with both of us, as I am a worship leader in a totally rockin' church in Southeast Tennessee, and she's involved in the music at her church in Kentucky. Dad was greatly involved in our lives, too. In fact, I consider him one of my best friends. There were never any major issues that came up in my childhood. Sure, my sister and I had a rough go at life with each other; both of us being strong-willed kids who played with a ridiculous intensity in everything we did, whether using our imaginations or playing sports.
However it happened, we grew up in each other's shadows, the siblings we were. She was older, but I was better at school. She was better at leadership and being the center of attention. Both of us felt we had to perform the best in everything we did, or it wasn't worth doing it. Mom and Dad never made us feel that we had to perform to be accepted, but somehow, that's the way I grew up. Mom suffered from anxiety and fear, and passed that onto me. She didn't do it on purpose, because anxiety has a way of hiding in the recesses of rationality and lodging itself into your psyche in such a way that it feels normal, and you don't realize it's actually a parasite that gnaws at your sanity. I was looking through a thesaurus on a better way to describe it, and I think a perfect word is "disquietude." In my last post, I talked about the beauty of the word "rest." Anxiety is the bubbling under the surface that makes that rest impossible, and I believe it's because of that under-the-surface boil that I've always felt I have to please God by my performance.
It's a blessing and a curse to be a musician. It's even more of a blessing and curse to be one in a church. I have the immense joy of leading people in worship through music every single week. I get to scream my heart out to God and invite people to join with me, as we become real, honest people in his presence. The dreaded thin line is that it can't become a performance based on talent. It's not an opportunity for me to show God how good I am, or how sincere I am, or how in love with him I am. No words I can say to him will make that reality real. It's all in the heart. Sometimes, I think we're trying our best to hide our hearts away from God, so our actions will speak for themselves. We don't want to come to a point where we're vulnerable, open, and honest. We feel naked standing in front of a roomfull of scrutinizing analysts, feeling as though we're going to be laughed at, picked apart and embarassed by every single flaw. God isn't that way at all. We spend our entire lives either cowering form the sky, afraid of some stray bolt of lightening to torch us where we stand for our sins, or we spend our entire lives jumping up and down calling out to God, "Did you see me? Did you see what I did? Will you love me now?"
Wayne Jacobsen says in his book He Loves Me that it's like trying to earn points with someone who is no longer keeping score. He says, "The key to living a productive Christian life is not waking up every day trying to be loved by God, but waking up in the awareness that you are already his beloved." THAT'S IT! Finally, it's not about my performance, my best, my worst, my fears, my calamity, my confidence, my cowering, my anxiety, my courageousness, my good days, my bad days. None of that matters because of these three words: "God Loves You." It's more than just a phrase or slogan that's painted in pastel colors on some children's literature. It's the epic truth that is the purpose of creation from the beginning of time. God is Love. Let that sink into your soul; past your mind, into your heart, and listen to his heart beat your name...
