Way Busy

So the past few weeks for me have been insanely busy. Between Cornerstone work, HM work, Mo Leverett work, and side projects for John, I feel like I will never finish. I've also been trying to balance church functions, youth group, small group, the little community we've got going on here, my spiritual life (on the down slope kids-read 2 blogs ago), the Thompson Family, visitors from home, concerts for work, and a relationship. I don't say all of this to get sympathy or to play let's see who's the busiest, I say this purely because I've come to the conclusion with a lot of help from James that I can't do it all.

I'm a major people pleaser and I have a really hard time saying no to anything. For some reason I have it in my head that if I don't do it no one will and then it won't get done. How self-centered of me. Honestly I'm not super stressed right now. I get stressed when someone else asks me to go somewhere or do something because rather than saying no, I start rearranging my schedule so that I can work them in. This is why I know that I'm too busy. I don't want to work people in. I want to be there whenever they need me. I know that is not always going to happen but I want it to be able to work the majority of the time.

I really feel that God brought me here to establish a community amongst people of my age group. When I first moved down here I waited and waited for people to invite me into their lives and there were a few that did and I thank God for them (Peter and Whitney, Danielle), but I was disappointed to see that people really weren't reaching out to me. One day Michelle and I sat down and decided that if we were going to have friends here, we were going to have to be the ones to start reaching out. If they weren't going to start coming to us we were going to go to them and with God's help I started doing that. It seems that everyone here wants community so badly but so many of them are scared to take the step to reach out. So I started inviting people over and introducing them to each other. One night I had I believe like 13 people over to the house to eat and hang out. It was wonderful and everyone kept saying how much they wanted to do it again.

I don't think that I'm God's gift to Nashville and I'm not trying to pat myself on the back, but I really feel that God brought me hear to link people together. I hate the word networking because it seems so slimy but I guess I'm kind of a networker down here.

Because I have been so busy, I feel like I've not been as active in this area of my life and I really miss it. This lead me to write the youth leader at Village 2 days ago and tell him that I could no longer help out with the youth group. This was probably one of the top 10 hardest things that I've had to do for 2 reasons- 1. Letting someone down. 2. Admitting that I couldn't do it.

Also this week, Mo and Gyroscope parted ways so that Mo could focus his money in other areas of his ministry. This was also hard for me because Mo and Rebirth are what brought me down to Nashville in the first place and this marks the end of that period in my life.

To try to sum this up...I miss you all. Thanks for being my friends.

On another somewhat related note-

My boss John J Thompson has just started up a blog called Thirty Three and a Third; Slow down and listen. He'll be talking about music, the Bible, the music business and anything else that slips into the faith / art / family vortex of his life. I personally love John's writing style and I thought a lot of you would be interested in this. His first blog is on the late Larry Norman http://johnjthompson.blogspot.com/.

Many of you may know John and not even realize it. He has been a presence in the Christian music scene since the mid 80s. You may have read his magazine (True Tunes News), been to his store in Wheaton, IL (True Tunes), been to his venue (Upstairs at True Tunes), read his book (Raised by Wolves), read one of his many articles, or even seen him working at Cornerstone. Currently John is the Creative Director at EMI CMG Publishing and President of Gyroscope Arts Inc. If you are really curious, you can read his bio at myspace.com/johnjthompson.

Also you should definitely check out Doug Van Pelt's blog. He recently went on a trip with Compassion International to Uganda. It's a REALLY good read.
http://www.hmmagazine.com/blogs/doug/