8 months ago I was sitting in my parents’ hotel room at launch. I was repacking my bag for the 10th time trying desperately to reduce the weight. As I pulled out medicine bottles and an extra deodorant deciding that they didn’t make the cut, my mom reminded me that I could always leave behind the guitar. It would be one less bag to carry and a lot less weight. I looked at the guitar case sitting on the bed then looked at my mom like she was insane… which she clearly was if she thought I was going to leave it behind.
Fast forward three months and three travel days later and I looked around as all my squad-mates carried their bibles to church, jealous of their light load. I however had a backpack with my computer that had all the chord charts and my giant heavy guitar case. As we walked in the African sun, for the first time I regretted my decision.
I have gotten sick at the beginning of every month and haven’t been able to sing since, well basically the beginning of the race. And I have carried around this guitar that has defined my role in the squad. I felt as if my whole identity in this squad was wrapped up in this instrument that I found myself hating. The guitar was never my passion, singing was. The guitar was just a tool. But all of a sudden I couldn’t sing and I didn’t enjoy playing my guitar. Worship was a chore and I certainly didn’t feel like it drew me closer to God.
In Thailand our squad mentor Beka spent a week with us and shared about a friend of hers who had to take a break from leading worship because she had lost her passion for it. She asked if I had ever walked through anything similar. My answer, of course, was no. Even with how I had been feeling for the last couple months, worship had always been something I had loved doing and inviting others into. And The idea of stepping away from something that I had been so passionate about terrified me, so of course that was not an option.
Fast forward a month and I found myself in Cambodia. I sat on the couch crying with my teammate Mary. I didn’t understand why the one thing that I had always loved, music, I no longer loved. I felt like I was missing a part of me but I didn’t know how to get it back. Music was where I met God, writing it was how I expressed my heart, listening to it was where I found joy. And all of a sudden it seemed so empty. I didn’t feel closer to God when I worshiped, I couldn’t write anything, and listening to music left me feeling drained. Mary told me that it sounded like I had put my identity too much in leading worship and maybe I needed to take a break. As I laid down my guitar indefinitely I felt an unexpected wave of relief. I no longer had to carry it to church. My load was lighter and I didn’t have to carry around this constant reminder of something that once brought me great joy.
A month and a half later, we were in Colombia and my team was challenging me to just be me… I sat and cried again, realizing that I had no idea who I was or what I wanted. I had put down my guitar and I was angry with God because I put it down in obedience to him with the promise that he would give me something new. Where was the something new? Why was I still sitting here feeling empty? Feeling like I wasn’t myself? Feeling like something was wrong? I began to trace the roots back to see where it was that I lost myself. I realized that the process of losing myself began long before I saw the impact of it in my music. It started at the beginning of the race.
As I sat in that hotel room, I was stripping away much more than just the things in my bag. I had decided that I wanted to strip away all of who I was. I wanted to clear it all out so that at the end of the race I would have none of the bad things about myself and I would be someone new. The idea of going home from the race the same person as when I left was the worst possible thing I could think of… after all, why did I come on this crazy trip? So I wanted to start with a clean slate. I cleared away all of the things that had defined me, everything. Then I spent 7 months frustrated in how little I had grown. I was sitting there looking at the foundations of who I was wishing I had some blueprints to build this new person.
My teammate Kate said that she felt God wanted me to pick up my guitar again. Reluctantly I ran my fingers over the cold and dusty strings. I prayed to God, angry that he hadn’t fulfilled his promise of newness. As I sat down and began to play, I felt the friction of my fingers sliding across the strings. I heard the sounds of notes coming together to make chords and all of a sudden the words began to flow. Lyrics came together in my journal and two new songs came out of that week. I had spent a month and a half waiting for God to give me something new, when really he just wanted to make what he had already given me new. I felt so refreshed in my love of music and I met God in that place.
As I prayed thanking God for the newness he had brought I realized that God had given me a tangible metaphor for what I had spent the last 7 months doing in my heart. I had spent so much time waiting for God to make me a new person when really he just wanted to make me new. He already created me, and he did so with purpose and intentionality. He made me exactly who he intended me to be and in that he gave the blue prints for the person he was going to shape me into. It wasn’t that he wanted me to be a new person. If he had wanted that, he would have just created a new person…. No, instead he wanted to refine what was already there and turn me into someone even more beautiful but still the uniquely made, ME!
I had to lose myself to find myself. Just like I had to put down the guitar to pick it back up. But I could have learned who I was a lot sooner if I hadn’t spent 7 months wishing that God would make me a new person and just trusted that he made me with purpose and that he would make me new. Making things new is very different from making new things. Making things new is a process of taking the old and refining it, restoring it, and refreshing it. And when we live in faith that God actually did know what he was doing when he made us, we give him the space to make us new.
Psalm 40: 1-3
I waited patiently for the lord;
He inclined to me and heard my cry.
He drew me up from the pit of destruction,
Out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock
Making my steps secure.
He put a new song in my mouth,
a song of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear,
and put their trust in the Lord
