Snooze.
6:10 a.m. Alarm goes off again. Josh hauls himself out of bed for a shower. I pretend I didn't hear anything.
Snooze.
6:20 a.m. Since we have to leave in 15 minutes, I decide I should probably get up. Get dressed, brush teeth, pull up hair. Upstairs to root around in the cupboard for a granola bar. Juice. Mumbled hello to Bryan as he appears in the living room to put on his socks and shoes. "See you there."
Out the door we go, my handsome husband and I, and into the car to drive downtown. It's that mysterious few moments at dawn when darkness is receding but light hasn't fully arrived to fill its place yet. We're not talkative on the way there.
This morning at Highland we're putting on a mini-production that is 40 minutes long and chronicles the story of Esther with a humorous bent. Bryan is part of the cast and so today is my day to be pushed out of the nest and see if I can fly.
7:00 a.m. Cast arrives at the Prayer Gallery on Lexington to get their wireless mics taped on. All me today. Bryan gets the mics out of their cases and replaces the batteries as I get to work. Ace bandages, safety pins, duct tape... it's a familiar routine from Godspell. It is strange to see Luke and Bryan, who usually are working beside me, waiting patiently to get their mics on. All seven done in 55 minutes. That's good for me.
8:00 a.m. Drive to the Orange Peel for load in. Bryan is off in one direction, making sure the wireless mic receivers are properly set up at the monitor booth before the cast's sound check starts. I have helped with our normal media set-up for about a month now but it's still strange to be in our corner of the sound booth by myself, running cables and setting up tripods and video cameras without Bryan's watchful eye. Especially since last week I broke one of the snaps on a tripod leg. I do what I can before we start the sound check. Today I am running the music for the production, filming the services, and running the multimedia screens for the services. The most I've done before is one thing at a time... usually the screens since that is the most simple. Trial by fire?
9:00 a.m. First service begins. We never record the first service in its entirety, so at least I can settle in slowly until Esther starts about half way through. Nate starts the worship set off with a song that I don't know. It's not in MediaShout, at least that I can see. Blank screens with bubbling geometric shapes in amber are all the congregation has to look up at instead of lyrics. I panic, try to find the song in the library. None of the lyrics I type in are producing anything. Still blank screens; Nate is crooning away, blissfully unaware or uncaring that there are no words for anyone to look at. Finally, two-thirds of the way through the song I find it at the bottom of the MediaShout file. Sweet relief. Although the baby bird seemed to fall out of the nest and plummet head-first toward the ground, she found her wings and learned she could fly.
Filming the production and running the music cues at the same time wasn't as hard as I thought. By the second service I felt like a pro. When Nate added another song that wasn't in the set list, I was cool as a cucumber and fixed it in one verse's time. It felt really good to succeed at this, and know that Bryan actually has someone to fill in for him now, that I can do all of it at once and do it well.
I came home and took a long nap.
This afternoon I read the entry for August 30 in My Utmost for His Highest. It's entitled "Usefulness or Relationship?" and really struck home with me. It's been a year since Joshua and my "non-move" to Florida that rather re-defined life for us. In many ways I felt like I was moving backward and forward in life at the same time-- I moved in with a family instead of living on my own independently, yet I was engaged to be married. I didn't have a "real" job, yet I was growing very much in how to be emotionally healthy. The year was a constant tug-of-war in my mind as to "this is right and good" and "I feel un-useful and people think I'm irresponsible." I discovered that I placed a lot of my self-worth in what I do rather than in whose I am. I discovered that what other people thought of my life and my choices affected me much deeper than I had hoped. I discovered that I was much more interested in what I was doing for God than in knowing Him personally.
This page-long snippet from My Utmost for His Highest really hit the nail on the head. It goes like this:
"Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven." (Luke 10:20)So, yeah.
Jesus Christ is saying here, "Don't rejoice in your successful service for Me, but rejoice because of your right relationship with Me." The trap you may fall into in Christian work is to rejoice in successful service-- rejoicing in the fact that God has used you. Yet you will never be able to measure fully what God will do through you if you have a right-standing relationship with Jesus Christ. If you keep your relationship right with Him, then regardless of your circumstances or whoever you encounter each day, He will continue to pour "rivers of living water" through you (John 7:38). And it is actually by His mercy that He does not let you know it. Once you have the right relationship with God through salvation and sanctification, remember that whatever your circumstances may be, you have been placed in them by God. And God uses the reaction of your life to your circumstances to fulfuill His purpose, as long as your continue to "walk in the light as He is in the light" (1 John 1:7).
Our tendency today is to put the emphasis on service. Beware of the people who make their request for help on the basis of someone's usefulness. If you make usefulness the test, then Jesus Christ was the greatest failure who ever lived. For the saint, direction and guidance come from God Himself, not some measure of that saint's usefulness. It is the work that God does through us that counts, not what we do for Him. All that our Lord gives His attention to in a person's life is that person's relationship with God-- something of great value to His Father. Jesus is "bringing many sons to glory..." (Hebrews 2:10).
I am thinking of going back to graduate school in the spring for an M.A. in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). It actually just fell into place one night this week when Joshua and I were talking about our dream vacation, backpacking in Europe. While we were on a Greek tourism website, Josh clicked on a link for "Teach English Abroad" and then we started talking about how I always wanted to do that and yada, yada, yada. Josh and I have been considering lately what we could bring to the mission field if we go international. We've always wanted to do missions but never thought through it enough to actually consider what we would do when we got to another country. Neither one of us are great evangelists or the pastor sort. When Josh decided to go back to school and pursue a degree in nursing, a major factor was that it is something that he can do anywhere in the world, and something that the world needs. It appeals to us to minister to a people group not only spiritually but also through health care, education, and social justice. I was a little jealous when Josh found his "thing" and was kind of moping actually, saying, "Well, what am I going to do?"
TESOL hit a sweet spot with us. Maybe because I once pursued it before I fell in love with this guy and moved to North Carolina so we could get married. But it seems like a good fit for me, and that Josh and I would make a good team as nurse and teacher. I'm excited to jump on some volunteer opportunities with ESOL in the Asheville community, and to talk with the program director at Western Carolina University (that's where I'd be going) about the possibilities.
Good things happening here!
I'm off to the gym in a few minutes to meet Michelle and Josh needs to use the computer for his homework. Till next time, yo.
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