Giving God everything is really really hard and its killing me. Really, truly. But its so good because I am dying to myself. I am losing my life to gain his. Its the best way to die. I know this is morbid, but its kind of true. I’ve always heard it was hard but it always sounded poetic. But when its staring you in the face its nothing like you’re pastors and the preachers have ever told you about. Its not poetic. Its messy. Its a fight to the death. My flesh and materialism is fighting tooth and nail to win out. Its so hard. I really need your prayers and support this month as I am dying to myself and completely breaking.
The day we were flying out of Turkey to Israel was a hard day for me. While packing, I opened up my guitar case and found the strings pulled tightly across the fretboard and not spaced properly. I picked it up out of the case and found the reason why: The head of the neck of my guitar was snapped and broken. (I don’t know how this happened. I had loaned it out the other day and if something had happened they would have told me. So I’m not going to blame anybody.) I stared at it incredulously. Really? REALLY?!!?!?! I have surrendered my family, left everything and now THIS?
It was the last straw. It was a birthday gift from my parents. It was music, part of me. An extension of my body. A huge part of my ministry and how I spend time with God. Its like my baby. But also, my last piece of home. And now its gone. I stared at it in disbelief. I wasn’t sure what to think or how to feel. Then, a small wave of anger began to rise up in me. How could God do this to me? After everything that I’ve been through and had to give up. How?! Why?! (See my last blog if you want to know where these intense feelings of loss are coming from). But then, something changed. I didn’t blame God. It wasn’t his fault. This was a big deal because I usually do blame God. I take it all out on him because he’s God and can handle it and then I apologize later, which is actually a terrible and sickening thing to do. (Reflecting upon this later, I realized that by not blaming him, this was the moment where I could see that I have grown and changed).
For a brief second I contemplated swinging the guitar over my head and smashing it to pieces. If there was ever a time or reason or moment to break a guitar, this was it. But I couldn’t do it and I resided to my disbelief. Then I just gave into the moment and the shock and bawled my eyes out. I held my guitar and wept…loudly. An ocean of tears filled my eyes and they were swimming. I hadn’t cried that hard in months. Maybe even years. Especially not this hard on the race.
It was brief. It didn’t last long, only a few minutes, but it was intense. I felt some of my teammates hands on my shoulders, supporting me, but they gave me my space. Just the girls were in the room when I discovered the tragedy. Then Joe and Grant walked in (they both play guitar too), I showed them the damage and a fresh wave of tears sprang to my eyes. They gave me hugs because they really understood and then I heard the song that was playing off of the computer.. It was Jon McLaughlin singing “Just give it tiiiime, its gonna get better, now is not forever at all…everything’s gonna be alright, just give it time…” I laughed and made a remark about the irony of this song playing at this exact moment. Then I made a joke about Sofia (our invisible 7th member of our team) being the one who broke the guitar.
My team was stunned. How could I be in such a good mood and cracking jokes after such a horrifying event? Well, I just thought about how it was broken and there was really nothing that I could do about it. I could get mad and upset, but that wouldn’t change the fact that it was broken. I’m alive and healthy, living an amazing life and in the end, I can’t take it with me anyways, so whats the point about getting upset and doing or saying things I’ll regret?
Joe said we could get probably get the neck replaced at a guitar shop for under $100. Liz, who knows nothing about guitars or musical instruments, suddenly became very interested in them because it was important to me and that meant alot. She was looking over my guitar, trying to figure it out and offer solutions on how to fix it or what to do. It was kind of adorable. So, I realized, this wasn’t the end of the world. But it was so amazing to see my team come around me and love on me. They were really great and supportive. Which was great, because little did we know how much I’d need them over the next few days.
To be continued…
