What do I want to be when I grow up?

I have recently begun working with Michael Talbott within Joyful Noise Ministries. Here's a link to Joyful Noise's blog page: http://www.joyfulnoiseministries.blogspot.com/. It is astoundingly helpful to have someone outside of yourself look at your life and heart and help figure out "what you want to be when you grow up". :)  Specifically-- what as a musician is God callin you into? As I ponder these things, I am doing some "stream of consciousness" writing. It's a lot, and it's just a beginning, but I thought I'd share.  Here you go:

I really want for people to be able to see me as a real, fallen human being with Jesus at work in my life. I’ve been damaged and broken and bruised, but God is all powerful and amazing and faithful. Always faithful. Sometimes I need to lift my eyes out of my own circumstances in order to see that. Sometimes I need to praise my Creator when my heart doesn’t feel joyful. Sometimes I have nothing but looking up at Him out of this messy painful life and seeing Him in His majesty and glory and I can’t HELP but praise Him. It is my “natural” reaction—a reaction borne out of my nature being remade.

I still sin. I am starting to be able to recognize that for what it is—sin nature. That doesn’t diminish my value to my God, and therefore doesn’t need to slaughter my self-image. I get to live life in much more freedom than those who don’t have Christ. I am also coming to realize that I seem to have “limits” in my life since I’m confined to this human flesh that gets tired and discouraged and has been badly scarred. I hope to encourage those who reach a place in their life that feels like a limitation, and I pray that God would work through me to show others that that doesn’t mean that they (or I) are (am) depending on Him less. We need to be available for Him to use as He wishes, but to not need to “force” the areas where it appears He is not leading us today.

While I know that I still sin, I also believe that willful sin is like trampling the Son of God underfoot and saying that what He did to deliver me is nothing. Sin is bad for me, but it is also so much less than my God deserves from my life. Sin also takes my focus off of the “prize” at the end of the race and causes me to lose momentum. I become quickly tired and ready/willing to give up if I don’t have my eyes set on that final prize—the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

I love music. I love deep rich harmony and notes within the chords that cause people to “feel”… I believe that I bring this to music more than many other musicians around me. I think that makes me unique. I don’t really care if I’m the frontrunner, however. I don’t want to be faithless with what God has given me, so I will always continue to make music, and my heart’s cry is that I will continue to use music in a way that glorifies Him and lifts Jesus up so that some will look upon Him and be saved. OR, if they are already “saved”, they will stay close to Him and stay safe… that they will recognize the joy that Jesus wants for His people to have… that they will be able to understand the intimate relationship that He wants.

I would hope that the lyrics to my songs will cause others to be encouraged. I believe that Jesus wants us to come to Him and find rest for our weary, heavy-laden souls. I want people to hear the words of my life-story and recognize/remember that about Him. I want God to use me as a vessel to draw people closer to Him. I want to express that our relationship with Him will only be as deep/rich/good as what we put into it. We need to engage our WILLS in submitting ourselves to God, drawing near to Him and resisting the devil. We also need to resist the urges of our hearts/souls that may be calling us into things that seem fulfilling but are ultimately empty and dead. Jesus’ resurrection power is real and can be at work in our lives today—now! There is always a way out of sin, but it means denying ourselves, taking up our crosses and following Him.

I don’t want there to be any confusion as to who I am and what I am about. I want to be about my Father’s business. While I may have songs that tell a story about my relationships with others as well as my relationship with my God, I don’t want for anyone to wonder where my heart truly lies.

Where would I play? I don’t know. I LOVE worship, and as such would love to be able to play in a church setting. But I am not focused on one specific type of venue.

Honestly, I’m not entirely sure yet WHO my “target audience” is. Actually, I’m not sure of that AT ALL. Sometimes I think that teenagers would be able to benefit from hearing some of the stuff that I have to share and some of my experiences would resonate with them… But other times, I think that it would be adults.

I have a very real hunger to work with other musicians who have their hearts set squarely on Jesus. I would love to share a stage with them. I have had a lot of “fire” in my life. I know that there is more than just “gold” in me… there is still more burning away that has to happen. However, I would like to see in others that I work with this same sort of “fire”. Even if they have not gone through abuse or addiction or anything equally as debilitating, our God IS a consuming fire, and I wish to see that fire for Him in the lives of those I work with.

Why do I wait so long?

I had completely forgotten that I have a blog. That's just silly.

I've been having one of those moments where I feel like I'm coming to the end of my rope, and that is exactly what this blog is supposed to be for me-- a place to share with everyone how ridiculously human I am and talk about what the power of God is/has been doing in and through me despite my human-ness. ;)

For anyone just finding this blog who knows nothing about me-- since the last post I wrote, my younger daughter was, in fact, accepted to our local charter school, and she started attending back in February. My older daughter has ALSO been accepted and will begin going to school there in about 9 days-- Aug 9. It's a year-round school, so they get big chunks of time out during the school year, and only have about a month-and-a-half break over the summer. It is a beautiful thing.

ANYWAY...

My older daughter (11 years old) has Asperger's Syndrome. I'm not going to delve into what that means right here, 'cuz I could take up half of your life with my ramblings if I tried to explain it all. So I'll direct those of you who are interested here: http://www.aspergersyndrome.org/Articles/What-is-Asperger-Syndrome-.aspx If you've got questions about what this means specifically for my daughter and/or our family, feel free to ask.

I've been having a really really really challenging time with her lately. Well, to be honest, I've been having a challenging time with her for about the past 7 years. I've got to be fair to myself for a moment here-- she is not an easy girl to handle. My younger daughter, KK,  is generally sunshine and rainbows. (YES, that's an exaggeration. She's a normal human being with her ups and downs, but she's a typical 10 year old and is therefore MUCH easier to deal with on a regular basis.)  Liz, on the other hand has these moments which I refer to as "meltdown mode" in which she is loud and angry and completely irrational. During those times, about all I can do with her is pray and help her remember to work on calming herself down. Talking to her during meltdown mode is completely ineffective. Sometimes she is unable to calm herself down in the moment, so I have to excuse her to her bedroom so that she can collect herself. Usually at some point it's like a light switch has been flipped and then she's completely fine again.

There have been times during Liz's life in which I've felt that I've been able to handle her fairly well. Those times I can only give credit to the fact that I've spent much of my time crying my eyes out before the throne of God. There is not (and has never been) one specific way to deal with her during meltdown mode moments.  Since I can't see into her mind/heart to know what'll work, I have to depend on the only one who can.

The last two years have been especially difficult in parenting her. My dad passed away two summers ago. That was the most physically/mentally exhausting period of my life. There were amazing moments, but I was further spent than I ever had been before, or have been since. Since that time, nothing has balanced out in my life the way that it used to. I'm having a much harder time in every moment taking deep breaths.

So what's going on? I know that God's power and his love for me and my family hasn't decreased in any way. Does that mean that my faith is decreasing? I don't think so. My trust for my Savior, my hunger for the Word of God, and my utter reliance on Him is what keeps me going every day. Is the "enemy of my soul" (the devil or his demons-- real creatures, but not worth focusing our lives on) winning a battle over me and my family? Absolutely not. My husband and I are continuing to commit ourselves into God's hands, and keep ourselves away from areas that would give him a reason to harm us.

Sometimes I think that I'm just INCREDIBLY hard headed. God knows that I'm unwilling to "give up" in any area of my life that I know He has, at some point, called me to. So, He allows circumstances in my life/body/mind/heart to change which almost FORCE my husband and myself into making different decisions for all of us. God knows the beginning from the end. I don't. All I know is that I want to be a vessel that His power can flow through. When I see my own human difficulties getting in the way, I get stubborn and want to keep staying the course. . .  even if other decisions that we could make would be equally good for our family-- they just wouldn't involve ME being the one His power is solely working through.

Sigh.  That's hard stuff to admit.

Why do I wait so long to see that maybe He's moving us in different diretions? Why do I wait so long to fall on my face before Him now and say that I can't do it, and I need him to take over for this moment and this moment and this moment...?

Why do I have such a difficult time saying that I'm tired right now and I'm human?