Back-Up Plan

"It's not the best of me that's assembling a back-up plan for you..."

Brass tacks: there are two ways to define what make up a person's interests - 1.) preferences and 2.) passions. We all have TONS of preferences! Among other things, I'm a Cheez-It enthusiast, a coffee fiend (bold, but light and sweet! Hmm, does that speak to my personality a bit?) and my taste in music doesn't match the region of the country I live in (sorry Dixie land). On the other hand, passions go a bit further, a little deeper, and hold a lot more weight. They aren't nearly as numerous as preferences, and they certainly have a lot more substance in a person's life and livelihood. One of my passions is music - playing it on my guitars mostly - but more specifically, my passion is songwriting. 

Lately I've been thinking about this lyric I wrote in one of my originals called "Pretending." It was one of the first songs I wrote when I started on my current songwriting project back in 2007. Looking back on early works of any kind is always kinda fun, and kinda embarrassing, seeing as I've gotten a lot better at songwriting since then. But there are always diamonds in the rough, and this line is one of them to me. It sums up a feeling we all encounter at times: distrust.

I grew up in a loving Christian home, so I had the head knowledge about a ton of spiritual matter long before I hit the real world. But, as I've found since graduating college and getting married back in '09 (in the same week, nonetheless!), it's one thing to know about spiritual matters such as trusting God, solidifying your faith, and loving your neighbor, but it's an entirely different animal actually doing it when the poo flings wildly into the fan. It's almost like I've had to relearn everything, but this time bring it from the head to the heart.

 A lot of people are stuck right now because they've never made that transition from head to heart. Back in the day, I learned one of Jesus' quotes in Sunday school, "Be angry and sin not," but that's hard to remember when the neighbor's dog is off the leash for literally the thousandth time, trying to scrap with your leashed pups. I've got to stop and be intentional right then and there: head to heart. As a child, I was read a ton of bedtime stories about self-control and patience, but when a customer is poking at my last nerve with their blatant disrespect, it's hard not to give them the proper piece of my mind. Head to heart. One of the things I heard the most during my childhood was "trust God," almost without any explanation as to why I need to want to do that; but when confronted with a dead-end job, no gigs coming in (despite a butt-load of inquiring), bills that erase our paychecks and then some, and a distinct lack of any prospects on the horizon, I realize that trusting God went from a good idea to a necessity for survival. Head to heart.

Life can pounce on you from all different angles, and that's why I'm glad God's helping me make the transition from head to heart - from knowing about self-control to practicing it, from learning about trust to actually applying it. You see? It's not much good sitting on the shelf - actually, it's quite harmful. The process hurts, but if you keep it in and don't venture to squeeze these virtues from your head to your heart, there's really no point in retaining them in the first place. It's like trying to pour a glass of wine for someone with the cork still in the bottle. It just doesn't work! Uncork the character waiting to be poured out, and let God lead you through the painful process of refinement so that one day the actions you know about in your head can come naturally to you, being branded into your heart.

Like I said earlier, this notion of distrust, it's gotta go, especially in your relationship with God. Get rid of your back up plan, there's no one better to handle your life. More on this tomorrow, but in the meantime, check out the fun song this lyric came from in a performance I did at a benefit concert back in 2010:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ56_HvpPRo