#crdschurch

Today, I decided that I was gonna skip out on church and just sleep on the couch, under the cool, mid afternoon, springtime breeze that was coming in my window.  Only one problem.

This damn fly.

Or what I thought was a fly. Because although I never actually saw a fly, I "felt" it landing on me.  My leg. My arm. My head. My feet.  And I just couldn't sleep.

So I took this as God's way of bugging me to get up and go to church.

Fine.

The series at church was all about THE NEW MAN, how men differ from boys. Everything this series has talked about, I've been doing since I was a teenager, so it wasn't really changing my life...which was the reason I was going to skip out on this week.

Then he said something that just might change my life.

"Don't mistake the absence of ease, for God not being present"

This one line right here...is the exact reason that damn imaginary fly buzzed around my head for an hour.  This one line right here, means so much to me, that UOENO.

See...when it comes to this whole music thing, I've struggled...ALOT.  I've failed...ALOT.  I've tried, and tried, and tried again.  Been kicked down, thrown off the ledge, and shot out of the sky.  

It's been a LONG 11 years.

I've been really struggling with the idea of being an recording artist.  Been struggling to make my voice do the things that the songs require, been struggling to write, been struggling to push my music outside the bounds of normalcy.  Been struggling with clients, just been STRUGGLING.

I resigned myself to the fact that if God wanted something in particular to happen, then it would be EASY.  That if something was really that difficult, that God must not want it to happen.  I started to feel that way about my client pursuits, and even started to believe that about the whole artist thing.

I've been really close to giving up.

And then today happened. That fly happened.  That message happened.

For me, that was God forcing my ass off the couch, because He had something to say to me.  It was God saying to stay the course...because even though things were hard, it was just him building my musical muscles...because I'm going to need to use them later.

So I'm gonna keep going.  I'm going to keep trying to believe that all of this is happening for a reason, and that God wants me to be doing this...for whatever reason.

So I'm going to keep trudging up this hill.

Every so often, we get reminders...

So it's a Saturday evening, and I'm at church (@crdschurch).  The series is The New Man, all about the proper definition of a MAN.

So today's message was all about being a good FOLLOWER...going where God leads you, whether or not you like it, whether or not you're afraid, whether or not you know what's next.

That's what The Edward James Project is for me...it's about OBEDIENCE.  I don't want to sing. Never in my life have I had a desire to be in front of the microphone.  It's the scariest place in the world to me. Despite my fear, despite my complete and total lack of desire, I feel as if it's where God is nudging me to be...at least for now.

And I figure, it can't be any worse than the shit storm I've made of my life, so lets give it a shot.

But while I'm listening to the guest speaker (a former exec at P&G, and a new exec at Google), I'm thinking about how all of what he's saying applies to my life, and what I'm doing.  He talked about going skydiving with his son, and when that door opened, it was the scariest thing in the world.

That's where I am. I'm in a plane, 12,000 feet in the air, and literally the door JUST swung open.  And on June 1, I have the choice to either jump, and trust that God's gonna guide me safely to where he wants me to be, or I step back into the familiarity of the plane.

So I'm sitting there, soaking this all in, and I get this feeling that I should stay after service, so someone can pray with me.  Great....here's yet another thing that I don't want to do.  Ugh... So then, the guest speaker starts saying a prayer for EVERYONE, and I'm like "GREAT!!!  That's the prayer at the end, so I don't have to stay!  Nice!!"

Then after he finishes, up on the screens flashes a message that says "Stay in your seat, and a volunteer will come by to pray with you".

Alright God...fine.  I get the message already.

So I stayed.  And prayed.

I say all that to say, that sometimes...actually ALL the time, God leaves breadcrumbs to show us where he wants us to go.  In my journey of obedience, throughout this whole dark, really scary time in my life, I'm growing to understand that, and trust it.

In much the same way he left me little clues (okay, a huge message on the screen may not be such a small clue) in church, He's leaving me the same types of breadcrumbs in my life...and all i have to do is pay attention to them.

Every song that's in me scares me.  I'm not sure if I'm afraid it'll be bad, or if I'm afraid it will be good.  I'll get halfway through writing a song, and this intense fear will set in...and I'll sit on the song, sometimes for weeks at a time.  Just listening, over and over again, playing with it in my head.  Fearing that it's not good enough, analyzing it for hours, playing it over and over again...

And then somewhere along the line, I'll get the courage to push through, finish it, and start the process all over again, with a new song, with a new fear awaiting me.

This song is no different.

As I take the journey down the road of being an artist, the fear is different.  The words, the feelings, the emotions, the flaws...they are mine.  They aren't attributed to some artist who then has to be held accountable for them, they are mine...fully attributable to me.

See, this song is painfully personal.  I'm not sure people will understand.  Actually, I'm pretty sure people will understand, but they won't want to admit that they understand.

It's almost too much.

The moment I was wondering whether or not I could go through with recording the song, questioning whether it's content was too much, I got an email.  The email said... "Give your very best.  Ask God to reveal someone you can help.  Seek out someone to help, and give them your very best".