Our God is ABLE!

After eating some incredible barbecue in Memphis, we hit the road for Texarkana, our hotel stop for the evening. About two hours later, we made a refuel and restroom stop. The cigarette lighters don't have power in the twelve passenger, so we decided to pick up some fuses and catch up with the other half of our team down the road.

While at Walmart, we received a phone call. A flat tire decommissioned the other van to the side of the road, close to Nowhere In Particular, Arkansas. Mike grabbed a can of Fix-A-Flat, and we got back on the highway. We found them, though a bit further down the highway than expected, and filled the tire. After a mile of slow, cautious driving to test the tire, we stopped again to re-check it. A decision was made to drive to the next exit, where we would at least be safer while waiting for AAA or other assistance.

The next exit surprisingly had a truck and tire repair shop visible from the off-ramp. Even more surprising, for 9:30pm Nowhere In Particular, Arkansas, there was a man there. He explained that the shop had been shut down for years, but he had recently purchased it and was in the process of remodeling. It wasn't even open for business yet! But God had orchestrated all these details, and we happened to catch him at the perfect moment. He repaired the tire for a few bucks, and now we're back on the road!

Our God is ABLE!!

Group texts used to frustrate me...

I'm writing my thoughts in the middle of the day... It's not that I do this very often, but it would seem more typical for me to write very late at night, when I'm exhausted and much more emotionally vulnerable. Is that a sign that these thoughts are long overdue to be released?

I don't even know where to begin. I'm so worried of coming across terribly insecure, even whiny and annoying, as though my only purpose in writing was to seek somebody's pity. I suppose I truly am insecure; timid and frightful and even paralyzed by insecurity. But the last thing I would ever want is somebody responding to this out of pity. It's that thought which almost stops me from writing in the first place. And just by writing this, I'll be suspicious, even cynical, of any changes in behavior of those around me. I'm too skeptical to believe in genuine change, certain instead it's done out of guilt.
And so maybe somebody would start to try, for a brief period, and I'd refuse to respond - cynical and suspicious. And before long, their guilt or pity would subside, and things would return to normal...
(After all, why are you only now trying? Why not before?)


I used to hate group texts. They're frustratingly impersonal, and I also began associating them with dinners where I would show up and be completely overlooked by a dozen people for an hour.
One time, as a "test" of sorts, I responded, telling the sender I would for sure be there. (For conflicting schedules, or simply not wishing to be alone in a crowd, I rarely every came anyway.) I sat and watched from a fair distance as they all met up and left; not waiting for me, nobody trying to check on me to see if I was coming... I had no value to them at all.
Before I came to school, I cooked for these people every week for ten weeks straight. I drove over an hour each way, paying for everything out of my own pocket. Now please don't think I did this to earn anything from them. Giving is just how I live. But to be disregarded, left feeling worthless to them and unappreciated; I just couldn't keep trying after having given so much of myself away and having no more value to them than the day before we met.

And then unfolds a year and a half of story, too much to explain now, but which has shaped me more than any of the repeating relational wrecks that make up my life combined. (And I mean relational in a broader sense; not specifically that of dating relationships.) There's no way to describe just how impossibly never-will-be-good-enough this left me feeling. There's so much more, but I just don't want to get into that.


So here I am in current time. All I want is to feel like a valuable part in a group; not taken for granted, nor taken advantage of. I don't want people to want me around because I take good pictures, or because I cook for them, or because of anything else I do. I want people to want me around, just because they like me. I can't remember feeling that since marching band in high school. That was four years ago, and it's been two years since having anything I could even label as "group".
And now I miss those group texts...



My birthday sucked this year. I went to class, I shot some photos for a theater thing, and then sat around my house by myself. Brian made me brownie-cookies around 10 or 11 that night. Do you have any idea how totally miserable it was, to go my entire birthday, and know hundreds of people here at school, and literally the only person who did ANYTHING for me was one of the three guys living with me? I will say, a pan of brownies has never meant more to me than those, but that day sucked. I've had a lot of bad days, but going almost entirely unacknowledged on my birthday really wrecks it all. And that's something nobody can take back...

The Hymns of Our Generation

This week will be the grand start to LiFT Camp 2010, and we’re kicking things off at Eastern Mennonite University in Virginia. Last week, we spent every day working through “practice camp” with the LiFT staff at Boyce College in Louisville, KY, where we held worship services, played games, listened to challenging messages and received other training in areas of sharing the gospel, praying with students, CPR, etc.

At this exact moment, however, we’re at Ridgeview Baptist Church in Stuarts Draft, VA. They’re sending over forty kids to LiFT camp this week, and in a sense, this is like a pre-LiFT kick-off. However, this church has a very wide range of ages, and particularly a larger group of the “gracefully aged”.

I'm the sound guy on my HeartSong team, and I don’t mean to sound pretentious, but I consider my role in this team to be one of the most challenging. No matter what church or camp or youth group we have the honor to spend our time, the music we play and the message we bring doesn’t change at all. What changes considerably is how I react within the churches and camps and youth groups. It takes considerable flexibility, because every place we go has a different musical background (and often it goes deeper than that, even as a part of their doctrine).

(Please understand, I consider this very positive. I believe that these people and churches have their various preferences because that’s what enables them to worship more freely. A fellow I met last weekend told me he loves the music so loud that he can’t hear himself singing; this way he can shout out to God and not worry about anybody hearing how “bad” he sings. And for the record, that’s how I like it, too.)

But let’s return to now, here at Ridgeview Baptist Church. Many of these people grew up in churches with an organ and a piano, with hymnals and a minister of music directing the choir and the congregation both. “It Is Well”, “I Need Thee Every Hour”, “Nothing but the Blood”, “Be Thou My Vision”; these and many others are the hymns they know and the cry of their hearts to God. These are the hymns of their generation.

Today, perhaps thirty or forty (or sixty or eighty) years since those hymnals and pews were new and those organ pipes rang their first sonorous notes, when everything else has changed in house and culture and church, these people fight for the hymns they grew up singing. They fight for the hymns of their youth.

And so, in churches like Ridgeview, there are some people who contest the use of drums, dislike the bass guitar and even cringe at the electric. They still long for the four-part, Southern-gospel harmonies and familiar melodies bursting with important theological truths and sound doctrine.

It’s vital that we remember this; as youth, as a team and individually; as a musician or a sound guy. That’s why, in churches like this, I keep the drums and bass turned down, and make sure those vocal harmonies sound as tight as possible. That’s why, in churches like this, we find joy in songs like “Jesus Paid It All” and “Before the Throne”. That’s why, in churches like this, we strive to show people that the love of Christ is strong in everything we do, so that even if they don’t like the style of music, they can see the power of our incredible God and the truth of his word through us and through the words we sing.

I overheard the pastor at Ridgeview discussing this idea with a member of the church. (That’s what prompted me to write, after all.) The songs we sing, these are the hymns of OUR generation. Perhaps, as the pastor speculated, we will fight for these songs forty years from now. Perhaps, when house and culture and church have changed all around us, we will still cling to these “hymns of our generation”. The music is different, but the words are as powerful and as true as any other hymn we could sing. And perhaps, forty years from now, we can remain open to music and welcome a new generation as they sing new hymns of worship to a constant God.

And as I finish this post, I feel the need to pose a question. Hayden, Tommy and I stayed with a wonderful fellow and his wife, both divorced and remarried, with kids of their own. He asked for our stories; our journey in faith and in coming to know Christ. Then he posed this incredible question: What drives you?

As young adults, away from our parents and our parents’ faith, what compels us to remain faithful? So, what is it? What drives us?

What drives you?

Disassociation and Relocation

Music is often touted as one of the most powerful methods of communicating, whether it's a message or an emotion or something entirely different. It's quite interesting, too, how many memories can be associated with music: come across an old song on the radio or just browsing through iTunes, and suddenly memories from five years ago come streaming back strong enough to put me there.

Normally that's awesome. I'll just jump into the antithesis you're probably now expecting. I heard a lot of really awesome music this past year, especially this past summer. Some of it, especially the song "Fireflies", I really got into before it hit mainstream popularity. Now it's right in the middle of its huge wave (not to mention a few other songs, heard and now played similarly frequently all around me, out of my control). All of the memories associated with such songs have turned to some of the most painful and bitter heartbreak. When those songs come across the radio or are played by a neighboring room in the dorm or a store I'm in or any other place I can't avoid it, these memories stream in as strong as ever, accompanied by the pain of broken hopes.

I started to wonder, with the seeming unavoidability (new word?) of these songs, can I force new memories upon them? Even if I never fully enjoy them like I used to, this would at least keep them from sending my mind to thoughts that buoy depression. Well, I'm trying. It's my goal to re-associate the song "Fireflies" with new memories of winter; a chill in the air, a cloudless, starry night, driving fast on back roads and rocking out loud by myself.

I just read a brief study that says emotional memories are rendered vulnerable to change each time they are retrieved. I need to know it's possible.

I need to know I can stop this, even if I can't erase it altogether.

begin again.

It's much later than is healthy, which means blogging is a terrible idea.

I mean, I should have been asleep two hours ago.

And I'm not even doing anything productive right now.

But here I am. Thinking maybe I'll get into this blogging thing regularly again. And I haven't got anything profound to write right now. At least, nothing currently in my mind. So, I'll drink some more water, waste some more time and wonder why I'm not asleep.

And though I'm feeling more exhausted than I have in at least a few weeks, I'm going to stay up even later.

This blog is such a personal, emotional place for me. I was reading some old posts; they really do show the full range of who I am, from the best of me to the very worst. I guess if you want to get a glimpse of who I am, going through this blog is a good representation.

Sure, getting to know me in real life will accomplish that. But frankly, I'm scared of people and of deep relationships. Most of my deepest relationships have all ended terribly painfully. I still have my sister, and there's one other friend, but that's all that's to show of the dozen or so deep friends I've had in the past six years. I suppose a few have just slipped away, but even that really hurts.

Especially when... Well, I felt totally forgotten. Tons of people I know, all friends, and organized by somebody who once told me I was of immense worth and a very best friend...

But everything changes over time. I experienced enough to know that change happens and pessimistic enough to live in expectancy.

But it still hurts.

It's strange how I seem to cycle through very similar pain this time every year. Last year was so similar to this, and the year before, when I was living on my own, and the year before that...

I just have such unanswered questions; things about life I thought I was beginning to grasp, but it's all been thrown out the window. I do well with formulas and predictable outcomes. Do this and this will happen. But such a certainty in life just doesn't seem to exist.

I can spend day and night thinking about the things that have shaped me, but none of that seems to help me grow. Instead, I feel an even stronger inclination to introverted-ness.

Ugh. I just really need to go to bed.

These are the wounds that give shape to who I am.

Do you miss me the way I miss you? The ways I miss you...

Do you hurt the way I hurt? The ways I hurt...

Lonely and hollow, but I'm still here, forgotten.

Could you lie to me and call it the truth? Tell me the truth...

I'm just another not-good-enough, another I "love" you, but...

I offered my whole heart; abused it, beat and bruised it.

I never saw you as perfect, just beautifully flawed.

All of me, I'm such a damned fool

Let you in, thought you were safe

Thought that maybe I had a chance

But I was wrong, I was wrong.

I never saw you as perfect, just beautifully flawed.

It's a process of healing, of letting go.

One Little Thing
Adapted by Tyler Scott

I love that you brush your teeth six times a day,
And how you wait for open doors; a sign of respect I gladly pay.
It’s great that you wait for me to call you first.
I adore how you know all the lyrics to songs,
And love to hear you sing along.
And when it comes to sports, I don’t care if you’re the worst.
But it isn't enough to give you feelings too.
Left me remembering little things,
The little things that drew me to you.

It’s a fact that I’d give the world for you,
And if you’d let me, I’d promise to always be true.
It didn’t matter how many times,
I wished and dreamed you might be mine.
Through any pain, I’d help you fight,
And when I was with you, everything seemed right,
For the first time in my life.
It’s almost certain I’m in love with you.
But there’s one little thing,
One little thing, not felt by you.

I like how you care about all of your friends,
But it sucks when you’re hurt by all of their burdens.
I love when you laugh without a cause.
I’m inspired when you’re crazy when you’re with your friends,
Can’t get enough of your stories without end.
I know you aren’t perfect, but I even like your flaws,
Still now we must say goodbye,
Remembering little things,
Your little things that caught my eye.

It’s a fact that I’d give the world for you,
And if you’d let me, I’d promise to always be true.
It didn’t matter how many times,
I wished and dreamed you might be mine.
Through any pain, I’d help you fight,
And when I was with you, everything felt right,
For the first time in my life.
It’s almost certain I’m in love with you.
But there’s one little thing,
One little thing, not felt by you.

But there was nothing I could do,
Nothing to change the way you view,
No spark about me to you.
All I could see were the little things that drew me so close,
But one thing was missing that you needed the most.
There’s nothing I could do to make you feel,
That one little thing
Which could’ve made this all real.

It’s a fact that I’d give the world for you,
And if you’d let me, I’d promise to always be true.
I would tell you a thousand times,
How lucky I was just to call you mine.
I would always hold you tight,
‘Cause when I was with you, everything felt right,
For the first time in my life.
It’s almost certain I’m in love with you,
But nothing I could do would make you feel it, too.
It’s breaks my heart to stop this, but there’s nothing I can do,
‘Cause there’s one little thing,
One little thing, not felt by you.