Appreciation (and Germans)

I know it has been another long while since the last post, but you are going to have to get used to that.  I have a one year old who has a pact with sleep that she won't bother it if it won't bother her and a husband who likes to play games.  And a really messy house, but who am I kidding?  That is definitely not what is keeping me from blogging, it's not like I've been cleaning it.

I was singing in church on Sunday and I heard a line that really hit me and I thought that I should blog about it.  It's kind of funny, because there I was up on the stage thinking about blogging.  I was not the one singing at that exact moment, though, so I think it's okay.  I'll actually get to that line in the next paragraph, but I'm going to take a side trip here to tell you that as a "worship leader"  I am definitely not standing up there...hm.  I've been sitting here for a little while thinking about what you might think that I might be thinking about.  (Haha, let me know if you can figure that sentence out.)  I'm not sure, but I will tell you that I'm still the same me there as anywhere.  I'm having a hard time explaining this right now.  I can tell you that my worship is always from my heart, but not necessarily always from my head.  Like, there was also a point this week when I noticed that the slide on the video screen was an ocean wave and it reminded me of the dream I had had the night before where we lived happily on an island until the Germans took it over and our house burned down.  And I laughed to myself at the strangeness of the dream. 

But I definitely don't take it lightly (worship leading, that is, not the dream about the Germans... Okay, I lied, you have to wait one more paragraph before I tell you the line that inspired this post to begin with.)  Every time I get up on that stage (or very nearly so, I am not perfect) I am doing it because it is one of my acts of worship to God.  I don't sing a song that I don't believe and I try very hard to ensure that I never sing without thinking about it and what I am saying.  But that doesn't mean that I don't wince when someone hits a wrong note (myself included) or think "shoot, I hope I remember how this part goes," or "Yay!  The whole band remembered to come in on 1, not 4!"  I could go on and on, but that is not what I am here to talk about, so...

"All we are and all we have is all a gift from God that we receive."  There you go, that is the line that must change everything.  It is from the song, "Made to Worship" by Chris Tomlin.  I have spent so much of my life a little mad at God for who I am.  I have been ungrateful for the me He gave me.  I am not good at appreciating who I am.  I am not going to use the phrase "loving myself," because I think that society puts way too much emphasis on that now and it wouldn't bother me if it didn't result in people being complete assholes ahem, jerks to everyone else.  But the me that I am is the me that God made.  And I am alive.  Ha.  A-LIVE.  Living.  Sitting here just straight up BEING.  So there.  I have choices and I can choose to be grumpy about the way I am wired or I can just learn to be grateful that I am here.  I get to experience the marvelous wonder of my life.

"Hm," you might say, "this is quite a turn around from previous posts."  Well, yes, sort of.  I don't suddenly have a joyous outlook on my life, but I do recognize now that I think I can find the wonder in the little things that are maybe not so little.  I have the option to, anyway, maybe you can help me be accountable to doing so.  Or maybe I'll be upset and you can remind me that there is wonder in the simple state of being and I can be annoyed with you for bringing it up when I was perfectly content to be grumpy.  Either way, I know now that it will help my outlook if I am grateful for the me I am, rather than there being no me at all.

Well, this was a lengthy post, wasn't it?  Congratulations that you made it to the end.  Really, I do so appreciate you.  I think this is helping me quite a bit, getting everything written down and out there.  Thank you for listening and for the comments you have left.  You are really quite encouraging.

P.S.  I re-read this before I posted it, and if you made it past the paragraph with the thought about the blog and the Germans, then you deserve far more praise than I previously gave you for getting to the end.  Thanks.  :)