Sometimes Hope Finds You

Before I get too far into this, let me be the first one to say that writing has drifted away from me over the past months and I've missed it...a lot. I know it's cliché to say this but it's true that writing is a good outlet. Writing has been that close friend that I've had since I was a kid and even though I lose touch and feel guilty about it, it always feels good to get in touch again.

Things over the past few months have been challenging, demanding and downright unruly some days. My new job has been a dominant force in my life since I started a few months back. I'm thankful for the work and even though we have a rather motley crew, we all get along and that's been a good thing. The work load has been the craziest I've ever dealt with in my entire life and that's no stretch of the truth at all. No...really...I'm serious. I've worked hours that I never thought I'd be able to pull off and then worked 3 more after I've passed that threshold. On top of that, this schedule is set to be this way til October...I do believe I know what it feels like to be in one of those iron man challenges now.

Another heavy development has been the indefinite hiatus that my band has to take. I know a lot of people would write this off as "just one more band that falls to the wayside" and honestly I was almost one of them. At least I thought I wanted to be one of those people. It would've given me a way to deal with it and not have to face the connection I had to this creative outfit. If you've never really been in a band that meant something to you it's easy to dismiss things like this. If you've been in a group of people though that you've shared lives with, taken on adversity and still find ways to be creative beyond anything you've ever done in the past...to watch it slip through your hands hurts...deeply.

 I don't know what the future holds for the band but I can say that it took a lot out of me. At the end of the day, after you've built your sand castle only to watch life come stomping through and destroy it, you feel like you really don't have anything left to give. Cindy has witnessed this happen to me over the years (more times than I care to admit) and has always been the one person that has been a real comfort in those times. This round of disappointment was no different.

As usual, my conversations start spinning into doubting not only my musical life but my spiritual life as well. I think it's natural to start doubting things when they fall apart in front of you. I never said it was the right thing to do but I do think it's a generally accepted reaction. Yeah...I know...the whole Christians aren't supposed to doubt thing should be inserted here but why would I say that just because it's the stock Christian banter for situations like this? I would rather let God and the people around me know where I'm at so I can find a way to move on than to go into Sunday morning denial mode and let it turn into some cancer like I've done in this past...but I digress.

I started relaying in detail to Cindy how I felt...like I've got nothing left in the tank and even if I did have a little something left, I’d have no idea what direction I would even drive. She came back with some amazing words of encouragement of which manifested themselves this Sunday morning...almost prophetically (that was for my Pentecostal peeps). We had finished up the first of our worship tunes, sat down to listen to a guest speaker (Chris Hodges for those of you that love obscure details like that..http://www.churchofthehighlands.com/about/pastor) and he mentioned something about hope. Funny thing...what he was speaking on wasn't directly connected to the specific word hope but the simple vocalization of the word resonated with me somehow.

 As we all went up for the second round of our worship tunes I somehow felt like I needed to be looking for or listening for something. I didn't know what but after these past few months I was grasping for anything that could dig me out of the hole I found myself in. Sure enough it happened. Normally, when we get cranked up I can rarely hear anything past the stage but this morning it was decidedly different. I heard the congregation singing...I mean really singing. I looked out and my attention was immediately drawn to some people that were just singing their hearts out to God. Incredible..you betcha.

Ok...time to let some people behind the curtain of your neighborhood worship team / musicians. Yes...we do what we do because we love music, we love worship and above all we love our God. We're also human so we do tend to pay attention to participation of the people around us too. In a perfect world this probably wouldn't matter but to a lot of us it in this rather imperfect existence it does. It encourages us and lets us know that what we're doing has some very tangible results along with the intangible ones that are directed to our heavenly father.

So back to this morning. When I saw and heard what I did it penetrated me. I mean really, really dug deep into my heart. Why?...because it was in direct correlation to what Cindy had spoken to me earlier this week. There was no denying it and when I realized it, it hit me like a sledge hammer. It gave me hope...yeah..remember that word that resonated with me? After months of searching for hope and feeling my faith starting to waver, hope found me.

Sometimes hope is not an easy thing to find when life goes to swinging and you feel like you’re taking every punch in the gut. When the daily grind becomes a grinder and you watch what you've created start to vanish. It's in those times though that God will step in and let hope find you. Do I have a grip on everything thing again?..not hardly..but then again...I don't think I ever did. I think I just fooled myself into believing I had it all together sometime in the past. Looking back on it though, it's easy to see where I was going wrong then just as much as I find myself falling into holes now.

Do I have a grip on everything?...not really...but one thing I can say I have a firm grasp on again...

...hope.