When the World Race leaders told us at the beginning to get
rid of our expectations, I really thought I did.
I thought I came on these eleven months with no preconceived
ideas of what we’d be doing, what I’d go through, who I’d meet or be friends
with, what would happen to me or my stuff. I thought I came with a backpack and
a blank slate.
I was wrong. The unthinkable happened.
My guitar broke.
I feel like I still need to address the issue as a recovery
program participant, like, “Hello everyone, my name is Meredith Hastings, and
my guitar is broken,” just to make it through this blog.
At first, it was only lost.
The airline lost four of N-Squad’s guitars on our last
travel days to Europe and miraculously managed to fly them from Panama City to
DC to Romania for us after we got here. Unheard
of, I had thought, that we would be
able to recover all four and in such a short time. I remember glowing at
the thought of how much God must’ve known I needed my guitar to function and
how good He was to send it back to me.
So then, my guitar was found!
…. Broken.
Last Friday night I took it out of its case to join in
leading worship, and I immediately knew something wasn’t right when I started
tuning it. I examined quickly and realized that the neck was snapped where it
joins the body.
It isn’t beyond repair, and it isn’t a lost cause just yet,
because I can email the airline and see what they’ll do about compensation or
reimbursement, but for now, I don’t have a guitar. Sure, I can borrow Jeff’s
from time to time because he’s nice, but it isn’t the same.
I can’t sing with it. I can’t use it to process my thoughts
or to make my world slow down. To lead worship, to write, to think, to sing, to
be, to rest, to settle. My guitar, Sheila the Seagull… she’s dead.
*moment of silence*
As I listened to worship continue around me and held my
broken instrument in my lap, I couldn’t decide what to feel.
I reminisced on the many moments of joy shared on its
strings, the time I’d spent at age 17 painstakingly playing the chords I now
move easily through on the same frets.
I thought of the intimacy I’d had with God when I played
alone, singing whatever I wanted and making up songs or playing cliché Hillsong
oldies just for fun.
I remembered squad worship nights in Peru, playing for
hospital patients in Bolivia, even playing the world’s worst rendition of “Oh
Happy Day” during worship on Easter afternoon just days before in Santa Cruz
and laughing hysterically with the squad.
I recalled bonding with the people I now travel everywhere
with, once strangers and now friends, how many special and silly moments had
been shared around one single instrument’s ability to produce songs and sounds
that unify a whole room.
I remembered a few months before the Race when someone told
me that the saving grace in this season of my life would be “you and that
guitar.”
I looked at that guitar, now just an odd-shaped piece of purposeless
wood, and tears filled my eyes. It felt like losing an old friend. Not knowing
what else to do, I just sat in my chair holding it. Dejected. A little
defeated. Sad.
Yet somewhere within me, peaceful.
A recent prayer of mine came to mind. In my quest and thirst
for true dependence on God, to be held by nothing but Him, to be fully
enveloped and sustained by His sufficiency, I’ve repeated a simple sentence for
a month now.
Show me what’s holding me together.
I’ve noticed little things here and there after starting to
pray it – my appearance, feeling well-liked, performing well, not disappointing
people, not failing – but I had not considered the fact that something so
positive could also be standing in God’s way of being my everything.
My heart since the beginning of month three has been to let
go of those things, whatever they were, to experience the freedom that is
promised through total reliance on God.
Only in whole dependence do we experience the fullness of
God Himself.
When we’re sinking in life’s violent ocean and hold on to
buoys that keep our head just above the waves, we prioritize our own survival
over God’s all-encompassing rescue. We sacrifice divine Fullness merely to
avoid emptiness because we’re scared of the in-between, the moment when we let
go and float among the crashing waves, forced to trust that something other
than buoys might save us. We settle for existence, our heads bobbing just above
the water, when we could choose life, a life lived walking on top of the waves.
We choose to not drown instead of letting God rescue us out of the ocean completely.
I don’t want to just not drown.
I want to let go. I want to be rescued.
To unclench my fists from the things that make me okay, to
un-stuff my pockets of the things making me feel loved or accepted that I’m
usually unwilling to relinquish, to live a life of seemingly ignorant and
near-stupid trust in the sufficiency of what God will provide for me if I’ll
just stop providing for myself in His place.
As I sat holding my broken Sheila in my lap trying to figure
out why I wasn’t sobbing, a smile crossed my face and I knew. I knew I didn’t
need her anymore. Though I wanted one desperately, I didn’t need a guitar. I
was going to be okay, because somewhere deep within me I knew that if I really were
to need a guitar at any given point, there was no way God wouldn’t provide one.
I knew that if I really were to need anything at any given
point, there was no way God wouldn’t provide it.
I stood up slowly and gently placed her on the floor, making
the circle we were sitting in look like some sort of funeral service, and I sat
back down, still thinking, marveling.
God will never not give us what we need.
God will always
provide what is necessary.
God will never leave us
without what is essential to our lives.
Such simple truths blew my mind. I had never trusted God
like this before, and now I trusted Him because my guitar broke? It made no
sense, yet in that moment I realized that I was singing more loudly than I had
in a few weeks, more brightly than I had on the Race, and more freely than I
had in years.
Without a guitar.
m
