When You Feel Like You'll Never Do What You Were Meant To Do

I was sitting on a piano bench next to him. A man I respected for his musical accomplishments. A sought after collaborator. We were working on original tunes. And he liked them and we were interacting like musicians are supposed to. Speaking that secret language of minor 7ths, channels, and chord substitutions. 

It was the most delicious feeling.

Then I woke up.  

It was only a dream.

 

The last dreams before you wake can be the sweetest. A lifetime of unrealized hopes smacked me hard when I awoke.

My reality started with a cup of coffee over Hebrews 2, (appropriately, not the Hall of Faith chapter), fixed breakfast, dressed, put on make-up and drove 30 minutes to make a flurry of meetings.

I sent emails and created phone call lists into neat excel pages with shaded, boldened and italic tools. I especially like picking out the fill colors for cells. Love the paint bucket icon. But that's the only thing I love about Microsoft excel programs. Forget the formulas.

Then I had a meeting about next semester.  50 sessions of the same class. No variety, just focus and a Fall campaign and one topic. Planning money. Another excel draft listed possible classrooms, Monday through Sunday.

They say when you're working out of the realm of your giftedness, it's a real de-energizer. I left the meeting exhausted. It was like someone had pulled out the rubber plug at the bottom of my feet and every drop of drive spilled out under the conference table.

Doing what you're wired for energizes you. Which is why drowsiness sets in at the computer screen at 2:00 in the afternoon, but you can work on something you love till 1:00 am, no problem.

Break-time, I sent a blog link to a meeting presenter who's topic was similar to one of my blog posts,  just on the outside chance he might be interested. It had nothing to do with my job description, but was the most fun in my day. My email was never acknowledged. And he used to be the work place massage therapist and I thought they were like hairdressers who remember everything about you.

Lunch with co-workers consisted of conversations about recruiting volunteers. But my big meeting was about the next semester's classes. Figure out how we can get 4300 people into financial classes on Budgeting and Stewardship, handling money.  Numbers are not my thing. I got C's in Algebra.

Wednesday night church found me escaping into a prayer gathering. And instead of standing and lifting hands with everyone else, I sat with my butt in the chair. I tried to absorb the spirit in the room, but pretty much whined to God.

They sang:

"Water you turned into wine, Opened the eyes of the blind...."

They sang. I complained:

Yes, You can turn water into wine, but can You turn excel sheets into manuscript paper? Can you turn Word docs in to song sheets? Can you change  a semester of scheduled finance classes into a musical production schedule?

And for the young moms out there who never think they're going to be able to save the world or speak at a conference or sing in a band, can You turn their piles of laundry into piles of offers and engagements? Can You turn their children's bickering into poetry and spoken word? The endless messes into the beauty, symmetry and order of a dream come true?

Those are the miracles that we pray for. Yeah, we know You did the water-into-wine and lame-to leaping miracles to prove your deity. We don't need any more proof. We just need to make it through our senseless days.

Artist Credit: Laurie Pace

I don't want to hear 'seasons of life' cliches. I didn't study piano for 25 years for a short 7 year ministry stint. I didn't conduct choirs all my life just to sing alto with the hobbyists. Not to mention pay for a private college education. Nor did I spend hours practicing scales and Prokofieff just to get compliments on how fast I click the keys on my Mac.

Square peg - Round Hole. Misfit. Fish outta water. Waiting, waiting, trusting, waiting.

Trying not to worship the gift more than the Giver. 

The pat answers of  "better plans" and "higher ways"  ring hollow.  We ain't gettin' any younger here.