The Hills are Alive...

This last weekend was spent at Hills Alive a free music festival in the South Dakota (is hot as a desert right now) Black Hills. It in no way reminded me of The Sound of Music except for the name and the fact that there was a piece of the Berlin Wall on the festival grounds, and there were roses in the middle of the park, and my family has seven singing children that traipsed around looking for Crisp Apple Struedel which turned out to be only overpriced funnel cake... At which point we decided to ride a free train around Strausburg dressed in nothing but some old drapes... Well, not exactly.

But here are some of the highlights of this gigantic free festival: We got to sing for 2 hours each day under the shade of a warm stuffy tent in 100 degree heat, that was priceless. No really we were glad to, we just didn't know if we were going to melt, once that was settled with liquids we made it... No seriously it was good to be a part of something we believe in that others are trying to do. A free Christian event with a minimum of 30,000 attendees is a good thing.

Other highlights include, sitting in a large air conditioned theater with my siblings and hundreds of others who like us sang along with all of the Veggietales. It was like a choir of angels made up of children, vegetables, parents and the misfits who had no children but still watch Veggietales premieres.

Also, there were a few bands I made note of, Abandon, House of Heroes, Flatfoot 56 and Emery. Emery I have somehow never seen live until this week and I have to say, they are really saying good things to the kids that need to hear them. I was impressed.

Last but not least the festival closed out with Third Day on the mainstage, I know, I know my friends won't think I'm hip if I nod to Third Day. But it wasn't Third Days ability to hold a crowd after all these years, I mean they are getting old kids, they're probably almost 40.... It wasn't the fact that despite my studied avoidance of mainstream Big old bands I still mouth the words "Don't you know I've always loved you, even before there was time..." Along with thousands of others around me... It wasn't that I remember a time when Third Day was a young, on fire, anointed band who put on a solid rock concert that would move anyone, and was really one of the more gripping, dramatic concerts in their genre. It wasn't that that kept me from dismissing them and cynically writing them off, as one of those bands that overcharges everyone then comes and does one free festival and thinks that covers their charity offering. I could do that. But I tried to keep my cynicism in check. Because I watched them in their show try to raise up a young artist that had something to say. His name was Trevor Morgan and he played this song about Jesus Riding a Subway and I thought to myself, even though it could just be a gimmick to make this rich band seem like they have a heart for the poor. I'm going to get past my cynical mind that agrees with my hip, informed friends that know better than to go easy on anyone.... I watched myself battle that night to not let my intellect always put people down, not judge by appearances, to sometimes believe the best and found myself saying by the end of the night that no matter what goes on behind the scenes they are getting a message out to people. Maybe it is a gimmick to them. But to the people listening it was real...

Jesus rides the subway With the hustlers and the creeps He rubs shoulders with the thieves And he looks a lot like everyone he sees Jesus rides the subway While the pretty people sleep and he says...
You can lay your burden down Oh maybe you've been kicked around But you can lay your burden down Jesus strolls the sidewalks On the wrong side of the tracks....

I find myself stepping back off my judgmental highhorse where while I've been busy serving God, feeding the poor, becoming poor myself to reach the poor, taking up the cause of the downtrodden before there's a t-shirt or a movement for it, trying to love, serve and sacrifice in meager attempts to be like Jesus... I realize I can be in danger of falling prey to hypocrisy... I so want people to know and understand who and what Jesus is but I get cranky and skeptical because I've seen so many people get rich off causes, I've seen people stand on the backs of the poor raking in cash and fame, while saying they're raising money for the poor, or a cause that they don't even make a dent in, all in the name of God. I hate that. So I've developed a series of walls and cynicisms that anyone who lives a life of service can probably relate to.

I was convicted and as I stood there singing Rich Mullins Creed at the end of the night, I was going a little easier on the stereotypical middle class American Christians around me. I had a renewed compassion and love that I needed to remember.
In the meantime the hills were alive....with the sound of music.

Haha, cheesiest closing line ever :)

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Well, I've been afraid of changes... Cornerstone part 4

To preface what I'm writing about you should know, this year started out with me, along with my family asking God where He wanted us this year, laying our travel, festival, music, business and all other plans on the alter, preparing ourselves to make the necessary changes to go where He wanted us and only there, even if that meant, we were supposed to stop doing certain things we've always done, that were good and right and important, all that mattered was where He wanted us. Sometimes this left me feeling like I was waiting on the edge of the dark unknown, standing with a calendar in one hand and a pile of questions in the other, with the only answers being, we have to pray about it... That's all fine and good, praying and seeking God, but deadlines are deadlines and time waits for no man, that's what my calendar was saying to me and what I was saying to my Dad & what I was thinking towards God. This carries over into my personal life, kind of like a mirror. Anyway, It is probably significant that in our 20th year of ministry God has really taken us back to our roots in walking in faith, trusting only in Him not in man.

As this seeking and planning or putting planning on hold to pray was happening earlier this year, we got an email telling us that something we had done for years wasn't happening this year. Now I was all fine and good surrendering my plans to God as long as I was orchestrating & planning the surrender, but as doors closed and things changed and parts of my life disappeared, I realized more & more how much I was not okay with it. If I make a decision to change my life or end something so be it, but when someone else tells me its changed without my consent....that is not the same at all.

In the days months and years that follow the significant changes that happen in my life without my consent, I learn to live with them but find myself rarely accepting them, because they weren't my idea... In my process & all the kicking and screaming that accompanies it, I ask myself why I'm so violently opposed to change, some of it is fear of the unknown, a little bit of "look how you trusted the changes last time and got in this mess." And some of it is insecurity I suspect...

So though I'm saying that I trust God with my life I'm too worried to believe that His plans will work for me. When I'm faced with a change in a relationship I hate it, and I give it what for and continual grief over how it failed me. Never trusting that God can look out for me, my heart, the boy I loved, the lilies of the field & the sparrows with equal strength & ability. I have come to realize I have to get over myself, because my planning skills & ability to manage the world while keeping it spinning fall significantly short when I step back and compare my methods and track record to Gods. As much as I need to learn this in relationships, I have to learn it in every other little way. His ways are not my ways. When the jobt that I have done all of my adult life, over 8 years, was taken from me against my will right after I told God to handle it. I had to do a lot of dying to self. I had to step back and ask if I was only hurt because I had worked and sweated and served until I was far beyond my self, for so many years and I didn't want to disappoint the people I wanted to keep serving. Was that all? No somewhere in there it became much more about grieving for me than just them. At some point it turned a corner and became about that job being a piece of my identity. And at what point insecurity & a sort of pride overlap I can't tell you. But I do know with all the other unexpected changes and the ways I doubt myself, the idea of not having that big piece of my identity to wear around suddenly became a very real problem for me. Or maybe I suddenly realized that it probably wasn't right for me to feel inferior or inadequate just because one little job was ripped away. It didn't define me. Just like all of the times people question my unusual lifestyle and choices, to the point that I used to feel the need to prove who I was or wasn't. Or why I was or wasn't. And suddenly I realized that it was all the same, what I do doesn't define who I am anymore than what I do needs to be defended so that I can prove that who I am is okay. I am who I am. Things change, change comes and goes, People grow and change, I change and as I grow I see the need for change and for sameness. I realize that change is good but knowing who you are is better and makes change less traumatic.

In the midst of all of this change, I have my ups and downs because while knowing who I am helps, I am still human. I still have to close the doors in myself that Time, God & circumstance has closed around me. I still have to accept things, let go of things face things & people, end, start over, be friends or enemies or be somebody or nobody, I have to face and move within every change & its a beautiful thing to learn, the healing that comes in change and the change that comes thru healing... A beautiful paradox of sorts.
So, though I spent my childhood hating change, even the.changes in my storybooks. I didn't want to grow up, I didn't want my friends to grow up, I cried everytime I read Little Women, I didn't like it when people cut their hair, I didn't want my friends to get married, I didn't want heartbreak and death. But you learn to accept it, you learn to live, and living learns you. Something like faith comes thru hearing and hearing thru the word of God. Change comes with healing and healing is a type of faith. A trust in Gods sovereignty, a belief that He knew you before you knew anything and loved you there. Perfect love casts out fear so the more you accept who you are, become accustomed & okay with being who you were made to be the less there is to fear in change. It moves you and moving makes you.

I ask God for healing and He gives it, or the way to it... But His ways are not our ways and I must be prepared to accept healing even though it may come from the most unlikely places... the most unlikely Changes

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Cornerstone goodbyes with 4 of my favorite children

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