Can you guess...

...from this picture what I was doing earlier tonight?

I'll give you a hint.

Captain America, The Hulk, and Kermit the Frog were there...

(Seriously...you HAVE to hear Michael Hansen's "professional voice".  It's a equal parts Kermit the frog and Elmo combined.  Not kidding.)

This weird guy showed up and we only let him stay because he has a Taylor guitar...

No, I did not go Christmas tree shopping...

I sang on worship team!

Ahhh, friends, it felt good to be back in the saddle.  However, it's only for this one weekend...I'm filling in for another vocalist.  It was awesome to just get to sing and not play the piano too.  I feel like my true instrument of worship is through my voice, and I just REALLY loved getting to serve the Lord and my church this evening through worship.

If you're not familiar with what I'm walking through with worship, you can read all about it in these 3 blog posts:

SHARING MY HEART PART 1

SHARING MY HEART PART 2

SHARING MY HEART PART 3

If you don't feel like reading those, here's the story in a nutshell.  I had been on worship team as a vocalist for many years.  A few years ago the Lord told me to buy a piano and that He was going to anoint me to play.  So I obeyed, got a piano, and 2 months later I could play well enough to play with the worship team.  I thought He was leading me down the path to leading a worship team, and I had all these lofty ideas of what that looked like.  Then the Lord clearly told me lay it all down before Him, step down from worship team, and surrender it as if I was surrendering it for good.  I was flummoxed to say the least that the Lord would call me to something, anoint me to do it, then ask me to lay it down.  If you want to know all the details of how I fought him tooth and nail, and FINALLY surrendered it, you should read the posts.  It.was.hard.

I am a year and a half into my "surrender journey".  It's been extremely difficult, painful at times, joyful, and did I mention DIFFICULT?  It's REALLY hard when people at church ask me when I'm gonna get back up there.  Because it's not just about taking a break to raise my kids.  While that's a huge factor, the MAIN part of the deal is that God is doing something in me.  It's a deep work that He is weaving into my life on a daily basis, even when I feel like He is doing nothing.  He is at work.  I've walked through some difficult things over this past year and a half that I had NO IDEA was coming.

I told one of our pastor's this evening that I am a year and a half into this phase of complete surrender and laying worship down, and I don't see it coming to an end soon.  Which is a tough pill to swallow, but I'm in deep enough that I know it is GOOD and whatever the outcome, I want to be closer to and more like Jesus in the end.

But I won't lie...it's fun to get to fill in on worship team from time to time.  :)  So I am soaking it up this weekend.

And by the way...I still worship at home pretty much everyday.  I sit at my piano whenever I can and just worship.  Not to improve my skills.  Not to practice for whatever's next.  But solely to WORSHIP the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  He is WORTHY of all praise, glory and honor!