Tonight I called it an early night... early being 8 pm. I probably should've gone back to the practice rooms at Wash U (where I have recently relocated my piano cave, thanks to my teacher who's a professor there) but in all honesty, I quit early so I could catch up on my personal life. I hadn't bought groceries in a week. Tomorrow there would've been no coffee. Seeing as how my professional life can't handle that, I felt it necessary to attend to smaller matters. Other things I hadn't done in a week: laundry (which is normal), blogged, or cooked. I also took all the clothes that had been sitting in my car for the last two and a half weeks to the resale shop AND finally folded the ginormous basket of laundry that was sitting in my room, you know... the one from the ski trip to Colorado a month ago. Yeah, that one. Things have been crazy... I've been a little distracted. Lent is a hard time of year for musicians. It feels like hell.
Sunday I went to Columbia to see my counselor, Lynn. It was really good... we talked about a lot of things. That's how it is sometimes when I go see her. This last time I didn't even know what we were going to talk about, I just knew I needed to go... mainly because a friend had told me that I needed to go. Anyway, our sessions always start out with me talking a lot. Exhibit A: "I have this piece of crap that I'm dealing with... oh yeah and then there's this... which takes me further back to THAT..." and somehow she always manages to pull all the loose ends together in the end with me, sitting there with a heart that remembers it needs Jesus. This last time, I remember now, it was me telling her about the girls' night incident, and telling her how busy I am, and how I get so stressed out but that I never see anyone when I'm stressed out because I go into the piano cave for extended periods, and stuff about the family, and feeling really overwhelmed with everything I'm dealing with as someone who still feels very much like a child, and wondering how in the world we make it through this life without placing incredibly heavy emotional burdens on the people we love. Because that is my tendency... I think it's all of our tendency. When we feel like we're drowning, we grasp at the other people around us. But they're not a lifeboat. They're not even a buoy. They're drowning too, unfortunately. The only one who isn't, who has the power to save us from the mess is Jesus... and it's the person of Jesus, the one described by the word pictures in John... the one I've been studying this last year, but have gotten so far behind in my study that I needed to be reminded directly by my counselor. "When you look around you and nothing is satisfying you, it's because you've gotten off-track somehow. You've forgotten that it's a relationship with the person of Jesus that brings fulfillment. For every physical need that we have, he presents himself to us as the spiritual fulfillment of that need." That's what Lynn said.
He is the Bread of Life, the Living Water.
You can't suck life from things that are dead. And unfortunately, we humans... even Christ-followers, we are not in glory yet, and therefore, still dead. It's the weird tension between the already and the not yet. So when I start grasping at my mom emotionally, or wanting Girlfriend A to respond in a certain way, or wondering why I'm dissatisfied with certain parts of my job, etc... it's because somewhere along the way I've forgotten that they're not the thing that saves me from myself and the mess of this world. Jesus does.
Anyway, I didn't mean for this post to take the soapbox turn that it did, but eh... if you're one of the few that reads this, I figure you probably don't mind. Besides, this is part of my way of mulling over things.
Lynn and I talked about some other things too, but in the end, mostly about how the Christian life is a battle of remembering that there's a reason we're unified with Christ... it's because through the person of Jesus, we have access to the Father in every possible way. And the battle is in the walk... because half the time we forget or substitute something less glorious or fulfilling and decide we don't need him after all. And then we've really screwed ourselves over for the time being, until somehow in his grace, he calls us back and gives us the desire to want him after all.
Seriously... thank God for that.
And if you're a dear friend reading this and I haven't talked to you in a while... you should know that you're loved and missed. Come see me in my piano cave some time. It's quite cozy.
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