It's about availability, not ability

I have a love/hate relationship with writing.  I love to write.  But my standard for myself is so high that I can't allow myself to write.  I am always waiting for the elusive perfect and unique collision of inspiration and availability.

During the year that I lead worship, I sent out a set list to the band every week.  The idea was that everyone would be on the same page showing up to practice, plus it allows us to connect during the week.  We were all so new to the experience, I thought I should send out some inspirational words...share some verses and maybe some of my own insight and observations.  This weekly email became something I had to do.  And I couldn't just leave it at the list of songs, I had to share more.  After a few months, I realized that I was doing a lot of writing...and that I was actually looking forward to sitting down and typing out those emails.  I might not have any idea of what I was going to say when I started, but I would find myself writing for hours sometimes.  And it wasn't because I was inspired, it was because I made the time.

My time as worship leader was up a few months ago and I've not written much since then.  I find myself in a place where I have many thoughts I need to work out and it seems writing is the only way for me to do that.  I can't seem to make the time.

One thing I love to do is teach.  I love the way the spirit inspires me every week, I love searching through God's word for more inspiration, and I love getting up and leading people to a new understanding of stories they thought they new.  More than anything, I love seeing Christ change lives.  Including my own, which He does every time I teach!  Win-win.  One of my biggest challenges is limiting how much I cover each week.  Every week my wife asks me how it's going and my response has been consistently the same "Way too much to cover, not enough time." Tonight, as I was down to the bottom of the second page of typing, I started to think..."what if I organized my thoughts and threw them onto the blog and then simplified what I taught."  That would allow the class to be a little more interactive and discussion-oriented while allowing me to hit all the points I wanted to hit (just not in class).

In the interest of staying out of the state of denial, I would like to acknowledge right here and now that I understand a few things about this blog:  1.) the only person that ever reads it is my wife, and she only reads it because I get cranky if she doesn't.  2.) most people out there aren't interested in my 1,000 word rambling about Elijah or any of my other ramblings.  But, I seem to have more in me than I can contain, so this blog will continue to function as mile markers along the road of my own spiritual growth and development.  If someone else finds it and gets something out of it, that'd be super too.