What is it that keeps me in my comfort zone? Fear. Of what, I don’t know. Usually it’s fear of the unknown. Fear of failure. Fear that if I close one door, I will have just missed something great and I’ll be kicking myself about it for years to come. I guess I just have to trust God and believe that I know what he’s doing.

Remember when you were in high school and it seemed like your whole world? Then you graduated and your world became a lot bigger. In a certain sense, I feel as if this is going to be happening to me again. Odd. All I can do is keep going and have faith that I’m not going to blow up.

I had the best day that I’ve had in a long time, for no reason other than it was just so productive. I spent my time finishing up my term paper (DONE!), got started on the art project portion of the term paper, came up with the idea for my next book, and am really cruising through the editing of my current book. I even finally came up with the name for the book: The Fourth Channel (italicized because my web admin is lame and didn’t give me a button for underlining, haha). All day yesterday I tried so hard to get things accomplished, but no luck. Today was my day! There’s just something about having the house to yourself that makes for a most productive day. I can’t explain it.

I had a good day today at church. Worship wasn’t half bad and I actually enjoyed myself. At this point I’m just counting down the Sundays until I’m done, though I’m wondering sad I am going to be that I won’t have the opportunity to make music on a regular basis anymore. I’m afraid of losing my regular music-making day. This wasn’t my preferred method, but at least it was something.

It’s hard to talk about something mid-stream, that is, when you’re going through something and you know it’s not over yet. Here’s the abbreviated version:

I’ve stepped down as worship leader. My pastor begrudgingly accepted my resignation and I’m committed to working with the church over the next month to find a replacement. Overall, the worship is in a better state today than it was when I started on it a little over two years ago. I had the know-how, the anointing, and my musicianship was decent enough that I was able to pull it back from the brink. But my heart has never fully been in worship, so this area has always suffered, regardless of what church I’ve been in. For this very reason I am not a good worship leader — when your heart isn’t in something, it shows regardless of how hard you try to hide it. No matter how hard I’ve tried to cope with my role as worship leader, I’ve always felt like a square peg being put into a round hole. Somehow it just wasn’t fully me and I knew it.

I won’t bore you with the details, but I have recently been released from the worship ministry. Since then, worship has actually been really good! How’s that for irony? I’ve been having fun during worship and my creativity has gone through the roof. I even kicked off our Monthly Worship Night (this past Wednesday) with a song I wrote – a maneuver from me that was previously completely unheard of because I don’t like sharing anything I write. I even feel good about it! Again, very unheard of. I feel released and at peace about closing this chapter in my life. What’s scary now is that I don’t know what’s next. Just because I’ve been obedient in allowing one door to close, doesn’t mean another one is necessarily going to open up for me. We’ll see. It ain’t over.

A husband and wife are shopping in their local Wal-Mart. The husband picks up a case of Budweiser and puts it in their cart.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Asks the wife.

“They’re on sale, only $10 for 24 cans,” he replies.

“Put them back, we can’t afford them,” demands the wife, and so they carry on shopping.

A few aisles further on along the woman picks up a $20 jar of face cream and puts it in the basket.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Asks the husband.

“Its my face cream. It makes me look beautiful,” replies the wife.

Her husband retorts, “So does 24 cans of Budweiser and it’s half the price.”

The hardest part about learning to write is learning to be OK with yourself.