Legacy - part 2

Event #2. Stepping down from music ministry.

God was softening my heart to receive His admonishment. The conviction of the Holy Spirit led me to confession and repentance, like a trowel breaking up the hardened soil of my heart. The ever-gracious Gardener began to pull weeds of wrong thinking. I realized that throughout my whole marriage I had looked at my roles as separate from my husbands. With the exception of raising our children, every other role I operated in a sphere apart from Dave. Oh, I tried to never do anything without his OK, but once he would give me the green light, I took the map and the wheel and drove the course at my own pace (which was usually full speed ahead)! We had our marriage and our family, he had his careers, and I had my ministries. Now the Lord was wresting from me those desires and replacing them with a reformation! He planted in me the desire to make my family, especially my ministry to Dave, my first priority. I needed to learn what it meant to live as a CONSTANT help-meet to my husband. I needed to practice not having any other plans or motivations other than living in unity with my husband. Where previously our marriage had been a tag-team relay, not it was a three-legged race. So, I cut off a leg! In an effort to make “the big gesture” to Dave, I stepped down from the worship band. When I wrote, “I cut off my leg”, that was not just an erudite device. Music has always been one of my greatest loves. I thank God for the talent He has given me, the training He was so gracious to allow, and the great joy and pleasure it brings me.

I knew that I would miss the joy of music, worship, rehearsal, and discipline. I knew that I would miss the fellowship of my brothers and sisters, working in sweet communion with the Father. I would miss hearing how God was blessing and stretching them. I would miss the privilege of carrying their burdens to the throne, of walking with them through the valleys and enjoying the vistas of God’s goodness lavished upon them. They were family! But I would sacrifice this for the benefit of being conformed to the image of Jesus. To walk this portion of my journey in solitude and silence, submitting to the will of the Father, with the hope of His promises blossoming in our marriage.

Dave’s reaction wasn’t what I had hoped for. He didn’t jump for joy. He knew how much I would miss my musical and ministry outlet. But he recognized my motivation and was anxious to see what God would do with it.

Now the hard part began. Living with the decisions to obey God and to sacrifice… It is one thing to make a commitment and state your resolve in the moment of conviction and passion, but after the campers have sung “kumbaya”, and stamped out the campfire, all you are left with is smoke and echoes. The hours, days, and months after were hard and lonely ones. Days previously filled with researching, studying, teaching, rehearsing being surrounded by people, and being on stage, were now strangely silent and still. This left space to hear the doubts, depression, apathy, and sorrow percolate in my heart. I felt naked. Stripped of the identity that I had built. Who was I honestly to God? What did He create me to be? The Spirit kept pressing upon me my position as help-meet, the unity and oneness of marriage, and how foreign this all was to me on a practical level. How do I complete Dave tangibly? How does our marriage show to the world a picture of Christ and the church? First I had to know Dave better. I had to do more than just say at dinner, “Honey, please pass the salad dressing, and how was your day today?” I had to learn to anticipate his needs on a deeper scale. There was something more (than just knowing he wants his ice cream a little melted) to this idea of truly knowing and serving somebody.

As I began the hard process of stilling myself to listen quietly to the Lord and His Word, He began to give me ideas, and new levels of interest in Dave’s life. Things that previously, I wished he would have left at work, now, I cared about. I began to pray him though his day. I found myself wondering what he was doing, and how he would handle a certain situation (I imagined would happen) in the course of a normal day. Instead of a list of things I needed to get done in the course of a day, now I was making lists of things that I believed would help Dave.

In regards to my portion in leading worship, I have always known how inconsequential it was in the macrocosm of things, and yet, I had made it an idol in my heart. This was such an uncomfortable place to be in, yet my desire was to find my joy in Christ alone and love to love my husband and family with the first fruits of my love, not the leftovers. With the help of Christ my Savior, I will continue the process of daily dying to myself and living to, and for, and in Christ.