Thank you and more

Your prayers have been felt and appreciated. From the depths of my heart, "THANK YOU" to all of you who have been praying for healing for me.
My foot is still out of commission and I'm still hobbling around on crutches. But I was able to get some time off of work last week so as to help speed up the recovery process a bit. I go back tomorrow morning, and we'll see how well I can stay off of it.
Attitude-wise, I'm overall doing much better than I was when I wrote to you all last week. However, I've still had my moments of discouragement. Especially over the last couple of nights. I had a bit of a realization last night. I as I was trying to communicate to my roommate how absolutely horrible I felt about this whole situation, it dawned on me that throughout the week I was hopeful that I'd be able to go back to work this Monday with a healed foot and life would be normal again. Instead, as the weekend came and passed, my foot decided to play games with me - it pretends like it's fine and then I try to walk [lightly] on it and it starts shooting severe shots of pain through my leg for the rest of the day. What I realized is that my unmet expectations have horribly dampened my attitude. 
I told my roommate last night that I've been praying for healing without a timetable because I dare not give Him a deadline, but apparently that's exactly what I did. And now that the deadline has passed and complete healing has not happened my mind has switched over to worse-case scenarios that say I'm going to be stuck on crutches for a while. 

I don't know what's going to happen with my foot. It may be a while before I'm able to walk normal again. Then again, maybe it'll just be a few more days. What I do know is that God is still at work around me even now, and even in this condition I have been positioned to hear His voice and respond. If necessary, He'll use this to further His plan and it will still be considered good. 

To those of you who are still keeping me in prayer, thank you. I'd like to ask that you pray for my ability to hear His voice in all of this. As well as for energy and strength to get around as I go back to work, and wisdom to make good choices. And of course, I'd like to walk again. :)
I feel the prayers covering. Thank you all!

Prayers for the Incapacitated

So, I apparently have this thing called Plantar Fasciitis. You can look it up and figure out all the details on your own, but the gist of what this means to me is that I'm not allowed to walk on my foot until it stops hurting again.
Can I just say that I've had my fair share of illnesses, this I know, and I've learned that I am a pretty pathetic patient. But I've also learned that I mostly just want everyone to feel sorry for me and know how miserable I feel, I don't actually expect people to do anything for me. So here I am stuck in bed or condemned to crutches and I'm forced to let others do for me what I should be perfectly capable of doing for myself. To make matters worse, there's the whisper of a lie in the back of my mind that says "this situation is [my own] fault... should have done something about it two weeks ago when the pain first started." The reality is, I'm not sure that anything would have come of it weeks ago. The pain just climaxed at the end last week and when I went to the doctor, he told me there was nothing wrong (see why I don't go!!).  Needless to say, I've been struggling at learning some new lessons on pride and humility, as well as patience. 

I believe that there is certainly another player at work in this however. I've been leading music for our fellowship here for the last two weeks and have spent lots of time in prayer over what God would want to do in these services. Last week in particular, I sensed God was setting me up for something powerful. First of all, I wasn't even supposed to be leading that week originally. A few weeks back I felt God laying it on my heart to lead music for the next testimony service AND THEN the schedule got changed. (And I hadn't even put these two things together until after the change was made and accepted.) To keep a longish story short, songs, testimonies, scriptures and teams were all coming together seemingly with little to no effort on my part, and as the week drew near my excitement grew for what God wanted to do. But when Sunday morning came, I couldn't walk. Mind you I'm expected to be standing when I lead. 
Can I walk you through my week last week?
Mon-Tues: in bed sick
Wed-Thurs: still sick but back at work; also dealing with a sore foot that I can't walk on. Visit the emergency room Thurs only to be told "all is well".
Fri: I felt wonderful
Sat: I couldn't walk. Spent the afternoon running around on crutches and doing random errands to continue on with life as usual.

Sunday morning I made my way into church on my crutches looking and feeling ridiculously pathetic and walked up to a team whose faces all conveyed the pity I wanted so desperately to avoid and chose to focus on the joy of what the morning held before us. We prayed over the service and each other and the week and were about to get started with practice when one of the team members asks for us all to join together in prayer against the enemy that would use my foot as a deterrent to keep me from being there and following through on what God would do through me and the team. It was then that it hit me how horrible my week really had been. But I was so filled with excitement for congregational worship Sunday morning that none of the attacks seemed to be hitting the mark. That just fanned the flame already burning in me.

Now, I'm feeling a bit like Elijah after Mt Carmel. My foot feels worse, if not the same as it did on Sat (which was the worst). My upper body is bruised and abused from the crutches. My one supporting good leg is threatening to revolt. I'm just overall exhausted from the effort it takes to do anything and to top it all off, I twisted my wrist this morning walking the dog, making walking on crutches that much more painful. 
I won't go so far as to say "I'm the only one...", I know that's not true. But I keep looking back to Sunday and trying to grasp a hold of the hope and joy that I had seemingly so long ago.
I am feeling attacked and I'm fighting off discouragement. But I'm laying down my pride here long enough to ask those of you reading this to please be in prayer for my mind, spirit and body. I know this will end and things will get better again. I also know that my God answers prayers and I would really appreciate you all joining my roommates and I in this. Thanks

My Heart Tonight

Brokenness.

Humility.

Surrender.

When all of life falls apart, when everything that you’ve valued, loved and created falls away, what do you have left?

What do you stand on?

When the ones that you love can no longer love you the same, where does your value lie?

To you who messed up, made too many wrong choices, hurt too many people too many times – don’t give up.

To you who know that you didn't deserve all of those chances and you don’t deserve another chance – don’t sabotage yourself, take it.

To you who feel hopeless without a place to call home – don’t lose hope.

To you who struggle to find purpose and meaning, you who think that you amount to nothing because you’re not somebody’s everything – you’re wrong.

To Him, you are everything.  You are worth every blood drop, every scrape, every bruise, every insult, and every wound. To Him, you are worth holding close, you are worth calling, you are worth loving.

There are too many people in my life that I see fighting the lies that this world throws at us everyday. The problem is that they fight the lies with lies and after a while they can’t figure out if they’re up or down and truth feels like a fantasy.
I know peace. I know security. I know hope.

I also know how loudly the lies can shout. It’s not easy. I won’t pretend otherwise. But it’s worth it. 

I want you to know it too.

Surrender to the One who created all things, who holds the world in His hands, who gave us the gift of choice and wrote His law upon our hearts, is not captivity. It is not restriction. It is freedom. Freedom from striving, from proving, from fighting, from earning, from failing. Freedom from the forced fallings of the world around us.

To those of you suffering, for whatever reasons, know that YOU ARE LOVED.

Don’t give up.

Don’t lose hope.

Don’t listen to the lies.

Look up.

Thank you for worshiping

Someone thanked me for worshipping God last Sunday night.

It wasn’t just a “thanks for coming and worshipping with us”, it was an “I really appreciate your genuine and open heart during worship”. I don’t repeat this as a point of pride to flaunt around. But the moment has stuck with me for the last two days and this is why – because what someone else was thanking me for was actually a battle of the flesh versus the spirit. And as I was discussing this with a friend later that evening, it dawned on me how much of a testimony that is.

Leading people into God’s presence through music and singing and reflection is something that I feel I have been specifically called to for many years now. It is a position that I very much enjoy. It has also come to my attention that it is also a position that I can too easily take too lightly. It is no light thing to stand in the gap and draw people into His presence. It requires diligence and discipline on my part; a heart for God, an awareness of His people and a desire for the two to connect.

God’s been reminding me of this over the last week.

And not at all too soon, you see, because starting this month, my role as a worship leader is about to become much more demanding and all-the-more front-lined.

So Sunday night God put me back in my place. He reminded me of the importance of worship, drew out the foundations of worship, and then spelled out for me the purpose of my calling to lead others in worship. I spent the evening pressing in for forgiveness, begging for a glimpse of real worship, and at the end of the service I got a “thank you”.

Worship is real life. It’s not the music. It’s not a feel good moment. It’s not a two-hour service or even the presence of other like-minded souls gathering together. Worship draws us closer to that which we were created for and can be incredibly fulfilling – as it should be – but it’s not always easy, nor is it always fun. I was fighting. I was fighting laziness, busyness, complacency and even tradition. Someone else saw an individual with a heart that so desired God that they were willing to forego the awkwardness of new surroundings and unfamiliar people and dig in for the purpose of experiencing God right now. That is worship.