Please don't run away.

We're on day 3 of PWI. For those of you who don't know (or haven't had the privilege of hearing me complain for the last 9 months), Pure Worship Institute (PWI for short) is a 6 day conference Jeff Deyo (one of our bands) is hosting this week in Nashville. Around 70 students have come from all over the country to learn about worship and various aspects of leading it / being involved. It's an extremely comprehensive week long conference affectionately known as the Deyolution. From my perspective alot of this has been a logistical nightmare. Building a conference from scratch is a helluva lot harder than I thought it would be. We were going off what we anticipated would be the needs rather than anything we had from past experience. Months of planning and praying and work have gone into this thing. And on Sunday evening we officially kicked off the first night of the first ever. There was something so gratifying to see all the work we had done come to fruition. Granted it definitely hasn't gone off without a hitch... there have been many hitches as a matter of fact. Each one of them designed to test one of us on the team. Our coordinator's father falling seriously ill, Chris' uncle passing away, problems with a couple of the shuttles and picking people up (my problem), brochures and passes not being printed correctly, etc are all things we've wrestled with the last three days. And I have struggled immensely with this. Mostly because the problems that directly related to the work I had done made me feel less than I am. I felt like all the hard work I had done and all my careful planning and organizing and hundreds of email did nothing to help the event run smoothly, it had, in fact the opposite reaction of what I hoped. Failure seems to be my constant companion these days. For once in my life I don't have anything to fall back on that I excel in. I'm learning to fly without a safety net. I'm bruised, vulnerable, and defeated. But for some reason I'm still fighting for this. Every day I tell myself I'm going to quit and go find something menial that I can be great at instead of being mediocre at best in something that actually matters. I don't feel worthy or competent enough to be given responsibility of this level. Why me? Why has the Lord chosen me to walk this path? What about this will bring Him glory in the end? Can He find glory in my stubbornness and my failure? Can He work through that? Because I often times feel like He can't and I'm one big walking disappointment :)

There is a song by a new (ish) band called Varnadore. This song is titled "Hopeless Case" and I've had it on repeat for days. Check out the lyrics and then head to their myspace. They are a little musical gem.

Hopeless Case

So I recognize you're amazing
I've known it since the day we met
Oh Beautiful, you are my darling
but lately you can't stand yourself

'Cause you've been hurt by the world
It's such a painful place to be
but I still see beauty

So darling don't you fear
I know you're not a hopeless case
and you were meant for more
This is a temporary state
and don't believe you've gone too far
I love you just the same.

So please don't run away.

So you're feeling pretty lonely
You are not who you thought you'd be
Well everybody needs forgiveness
Even sometimes from themselves

When you're hurt by the world
It's such a painful place to be
but i still see beauty

So darling don't you fear
I know you're not a hopeless case
You were meant for more
This is a temporary state
Don't believe you've gone too far
I love you just the same

So please don't run away.

You've been scared to face yourself at night
Telling everyone that you're "just fine"
Tell me what's the use in life if you can't be free?

So darling don't you fear
I know you're not a hopeless case
You were meant for more
This is a temporary state
and don't believe you've gone too far
I love you just the same

so please dont run away.

www.myspace.com/varnadoreband


This time - I'm trying not to run away.