Have you ever had those moments where you get so excited about something that you literally get butterflies in your stomach for long periods of time? Maybe it's just me, but that's what has been going on with me this week. I have been working really hard on coming up with ideas for new stuff for my website and social media. And I am really really excited for putting it out there! I just can't wait to see what people think of it.
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Honestly... It's been a pretty rough week. I've been pretty stressed throughout, and that's never fun. I felt overwhelmed by my situation. Worry kicked in and I just couldn't escape it. It had control of my mind again. I couldn't think about anything else besides my problem. The thoughts consumed me.
I have had lots of ideas this week. I want to be a musician, and I have lots of ideas of how to make that happen. What can I do now to bring that dream closer? There has been so much stuff running through my head this week, ideas of what I can do. And the funny thing is, while I think about how I'm going to make my music glorify God, I'm not actually thinking about Him in the process.
"So, who would like to pray?"
As much as I hate to admit it, I hated this question. It made me afraid. "I don't want to get picked. I don't want to pray. What will they think of me if I stutter or misspeak? What if my prayer doesn't sound as spiritual as other people's prayers?" That's basically what runs through my mind when I hear those words. And that needs to change. If I had to name one thing that I spend way too much time doing, it would be worrying. I am constantly worrying about different things. After all, if I don't think through every possible scenario, how am I going to react to it? I think through possible situations in my head, and possible outcomes, and how I will react. Things I should do but know I never will. Things that will never ever happen, but I worry about them anyway.
I had always heard and read that you shouldn't try and go through your struggles alone, you should be able to talk to others about them, and just talking about it would help you feel better about it. I never really understood that. I really wanted it, but I didn't feel like I had any friends I could talk to. Luckily, this summer, I met some awesome people and became really good friends with them, and they are the ones that I feel like I can confide in and talk to about anything. And it is a really good feeling, being able to talk about stuff. I really have never had that, and I wonder how different I would be if I did.
Have you ever had those days where you just feel far away from God? Far too often, I wonder why I am here and what I am doing. I feel like I'm wasting my time, because I don't spend enough time with God and doing things for Him.
The Bible says "If anyone wants to be My follower, he must take up his cross and follow Me." And I don't feel like I'm doing that. God calls us to be uncomfortable, to stretch ourselves and do things that we may otherwise not do. And I'm not doing these things. Why not? It's a simple command. Why can't I obey it? I'm going to be honest: there are a lot of days that I just don't feel like I'm good enough. I make an extremely stupid mistake. Something so stupid that I can't even figure out how I did it. It just happens... more times than I care to admit.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I love music. I love listening to lyrics, instrumentation, and melodies. A good song will almost always brighten my mood. So I thought, why not write some songs of my own? Wouldn't that be awesome? And it would! However, I don't know if it is for me yet. I've been thinking about writing songs a lot, and while I would love to do it, there is one major question: Who is my music glorifying?
Right now, if I was writing songs, I would be concerned about myself. Not God. It's a heart issue. I want to be important. A lot of times, I feel lonely. Unimportant to anyone or anything. I want to matter. I want to make a difference. But what is that difference? Is it a difference in my personal life, or is it a difference for the Kingdom? If I decide to write music, I want to make sure it is for the right reason. Correcting this heart issue? I can't do it on my own. But I know God can, if it is in His will. If he wants me to write music, it will happen. So I'm not going to worry about it. I'm just going to pray that he would help me discover His plan for me. Right now, I don't think I am in a good position for songwriting. While I would LOVE to write music, it wouldn't be about Him, it would be about me. And that's why I'm not going to start writing any songs, not yet. But maybe, someday, it will happen. But whether it happens or not, I know God has a plan for me, and I intend to do whatever I can to follow that plan. So we had our first attempt at recording on the last Tuesday in July. Zack, my dad, and I all packed up our gear and headed to church. When we arrived, we immediately headed into the sanctuary to begin.
I had already had a meeting with Gary Houk, our church's operations coordinator, a few weeks earlier to learn how to use the soundboard for recording. I was a little worried about it, because I don't always have the greatest memory, and soundboards look (and are) pretty overwhelming to someone who doesn't know how to use them. I started setting up the way Gary had shown me, and immediately ran into problems. The first thing we did is try to determine some camera angles for the drums. This was difficult, because it didn't look very good if you looked through the cage around it, but there was very little room inside the cage for it. Finally, we brought a chair into the cage and put the tripod on top of it. However, we had another problem with this: Since Zack had to start the recording process, there wouldn't be a way to start the camera safely. We just decided we would figure that out when we got to the drums. So we moved on to set up the recording process. And just as I feared, I had forgotten a few steps. While I WAS able to get the soundboard and the recording files set up, I still had to get the song to play through the stage monitors so we would be able to hear it while we were playing, but I couldn't remember how to do it. I tried and tried, and I sat there for over an hour trying to remember, and I just couldn't do it. So our first night ended in failure. We weren't able to record anything. It was a really frustrating night for me. I had been thinking and planning and dreaming about that night for months, and it turned out to be a huge letdown. I didn't remember how to set it up. Frustration is something I'm very bad at dealing with, so for the next few days, I beat myself up about that night. I was upset with myself, upset that I couldn't do better, upset I had to wait even longer to start making music videos. I'm still upset about that night, but I'm not as angry as I was. My dad had told me that the first night wasn't going to go well. I would mess up, I would do something wrong and have to start over. It would be a learning experience. I knew it was true, but I pushed that thought away and had expectations that were far too high for my first try. Gary has moved to Kentucky since our meeting, so I can't meet with him about it again. I will be setting up another meeting with someone else from our tech team to review how to use the soundboard. Not only do I want to know HOW to do it, I want to know WHY I have to take each step, so I can remember it for next time. Instead of memorizing it for next time, I want to understand the different aspects of the board so I can take what I know and apply it to other situations as well. Hopefully, next time will go better. But either way, I have to go in with patience, and understand, sometimes, you just have to wait. |
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