Over the mountain

It's been awhile since I've updated, but that's because I feel like I've been trying to climb a mountain of stresses for the past week. This past Wednesday was my first go at giving the meditation for Youth Group. I ended up doing pretty much what I wanted to/have written about previously except I am not going to try to involve the Student Leadership Team. That would have been cool, but I'm not sure there would have been enough commitment from the kids. Plus, I thought that I was supposed to be speaking for 30 minutes, but after I got done with the first one he tells me that I was supposed to keep it around 20. Hey, if the Spirit moves me to ramble for ten more minutes, what's the problem. Anyway, the first talk went really well. The week leading up to it was really hard simply because I wanted to do well so badly that it was seriously all I could think about. I would lay in bed at night just going over how I was going to do this, or how I would say that, or where this part would come in better. It was actually a little unnerving. I spent a lot of time changing, rearranging, adding to, and cutting parts of the meditation right up until I gave it. I think it paid off, though. I was a little nervous about having the High School kids first because they are less apt to pay attention, but they were actually a better audience than the Middle School kids. They responded to my questions, laughed at my jokes, and best of all seemed contemplative when I was being serious. The only comments that Mike had to give me afterward were that it was a little too long, and I said the same thing a few too many times. Other than that, I think he was impressed. Now there's only three more to go.

Once I got that part of my mountain out of my head, I had to face yet another presentation the next day in class. The thing is, I couldn't focus on anything but Moses and the burning bush for the entire last week, so anything about this presentation just got pushed back. I got back from Youth Group on Wednesday night at about 9 and turned a few printed off articles, and a few powerpoint slides I had forced myself to start into a half hour (well, it ended up being too long) presentation by 1 o'clock the next morning. In the end, I thought I did a pretty good job. The assignment was to talk about a dilemma that the organization where we are interning has faced/will face. I chose to talk about what it means to be an intentionally cross-cultural church. I have always been intrigued by this part of Eastminster's vision statement. I wanted my presentation to be anything but usual, so I did my best to shake things up. I even made the class sing some gospel which went over better than I thought it would. I think the presentation lacked real "solutions" to the "dilemma", but I also concluded that there are no easy one-size-fits-all solutions to racial reconciliation within the church. I said at the end, that being intentional has to take on a case-by-case scenario because every congregation is different. A quote I found that I liked talked about how when we present the gospel to other people in their "heart language" we come to realize that our construct of reality is too small, our version of the gospel is incomplete. We cannot experience the fullness of God without understanding the fullness of other people's experiences.

Well, once I got over that hurdle, I decided to take a good long nap because I felt like I deserved it. Friday was pretty stress free. Mike and I took a roadtrip to Sam's Club to pick up snacks for the After School program. Roadtrips are always fun. I'm so thankful that I've been placed at an internship where I can feel comfortable just hanging out with my supervisor. It definitely makes life easier. Once I got back on Friday afternoon it was time to start focusing on the next hurdle. I was asked to fill in for the normal piano player for the praise band on Sunday. I was really nervous in the back of my mind all week simply because the normal guy is amazing, and a lot of the songs we do are completely new styles for me. We got the song list on Wednesday and since then, any chance I got I was trying to make sure I was ready. Then the Saturday morning rehearsal came and it was probably one of the worst musical experiences of my life. From the very first song it just felt like I couldn't do anything right. Even when I felt like I was doing the right thing it just sounded bad to me. I was trying to follow the sheet music Nikki gave me which went right with the CD's I had practiced with, but she didn't tell me that she wasn't going to be following the music and I was just expected to watch her and play the right thing. There were some many times when I wasn't even sure which key we were supposed to be in. And every time we had to stop I just felt like I kept getting looks from everyone like "what are you doing?" I was completely frustrated at Nikki for just expecting me to know what was going on and at myself for not being good enough or not practicing enough even though I felt like I was. The way that rehearsal went, it felt like it sounded like I hadn't practiced at all. I was nearly crying I was so frustrated at one point. I was supposed to stay afterward to observe the Children's choir, but I just had to get out of there. Added on to this was the fact that my parents were on their way and I wanted to show them that I was doing something productive with my life in Pittsburgh and coming to see me fumble through some praise songs didn't really fit that image in my head.

My parents got here that afternoon and I got to forget about all that for awhile. I showed them around the city, we went out for the early bird special (ha!), we visited Mt. Washington to see the lights, and then they headed back to their hotel. I came back and finally found enough resolve to stop being mad and frustrated and start trying to do something about me not being ready to play piano on Sunday. I practiced on the out-of-tune piano in the middle of an entire roomful of screaming kids here for the weekend for about an hour and a half. I had a better idea of what Nikki wanted now, but I still felt like I wasn't actually ready. The next morning I got to the church extra early and practiced even more. As I was sitting there waiting to start the first song during the service, I just decided to give all of it up to God. I didn't care about what Nikki or my parents or the congregation or the band or even myself thought. I just wanted to give my best effort to praise God with everything I had. It was only after that that I felt at peace about the situation and I was able to really play well. Granted, not everything was perfect, but I was giving it my all.

All I had left to do after that was entertain my parents for a few more hours. It was really nice to have a piece of home here for awhile. Even though we didn't really do anything except talk and eat, I was glad they came. I always try to be as happy as I can be where I'm at, so I don't really get homesick, but it's good to know that home gets Mark-sick and needs to visit every once in awhile. Well, like all the presentation I seem to give, this post is entirely too long. I need to go saturate myself in the story of Queen Esther before Wednesday rolls around again.