Changes

I'm sitting here tonight trying to record a song for a friend of mine who happens to be laying her sister-in-law to rest this weekend.  I'm thinking about life.  I'm thinking about the fact that I am still alive and breathing.  I'm thinking about how good my life really is, how blessed I have been.  I have a family who loves me.  I live in a great city.  I have so many good friends.  I don't have a job but I have enough saved up and enough of an education to not have to worry about it right away.  The list goes on here.  I get to follow my dreams.  I get to run after what God has put in my heart to do.

What do I do with so much goodness?  I feel terribly indebted and almost guilty for having any of it.  I feel as if I should be doing so much more...

Which leads to this next observation I have made this week.  In all of the solitude and sleeping in and having no obligations whatsoever, I have realized how much of my identity has come from the things that I do.  Teacher, worship leader, friend, daughter, sister, songwriter...and so many other little things that fall along these lines.  I was getting up early, going to bed late, hardly had time for a nap...always going, going, going.  And then one day I got this incredible opportunity to move to TN.

And I no longer have a place to lead worship.  I don't even know if I will be able to get a teaching job.  My family lives far away.  I have two friends (wonderful friends) in this city who both have full time jobs.  So, I have been sleeping in...getting my finances and job hunting in order...doing laundry...writing...taking naps...playing my piano and guitar (a little bit)...reading...taking long drives through the country...listening to new music...going out dancing.

Do you know what I have realized?  All my security about who I am in God has gone out the window.  "Do I even know Him?" I keep asking myself.  Do I even know me?

What if everything that I was doing was just what I was doing in order to make it through the last season?  What if that wasn't really my heart?  It touched my heart, shaped it, molded it, disciplined it...etc.  But, here I am in this new season...and now what?

What if I don't get a teaching job?  Then, I am no longer a teacher.  I become someone totally different in the eyes of everyone I come into contact with.  That alone changes everything...not to mention all the other changes I am going through.

I am trying to put words to what I have been sensing in the past couple of weeks.  I just keep sensing that everything is changing and in more ways than I thought it would.  The only thing that will remain the same is that I can trust God...that I can hear His voice in my life...and that I will follow where He leads.