i need your thoughts/prayers

I have an invasive, painful surgery Thursday to get my kidney stone out. Not being too graphic, this is what will happen: the doctor will be entering my you-know-what and breaking the stone, and then pulling it out. Apparently my stone has doubled in size over the past four months that I've been harboring it, and it would be crazy (not to mention unhealthy) to leave it in any longer.

However I will be in quite a bit of pain for a while. So please keep me in your thoughts and prayers Thursday morning at 8 AM.

about my musical weekend

This weekend was a good one...I played music with my band at Spring Hill on Saturday night for a Wild Game dinner...yeah, it is what you're probably thinking. A very Mississippi event where people brought in various animals they had hunted and prepared. For example, there was rabbit, wild hog, deer, etc. If you can kill it and cook it, it was probably there.

The meat (no pun intended) of the story for me, though, is that Friday night at practice I had some real pre-show jitters. As you may (or may not) know, I lead worship for our youth services on Wednesday nights. I'm still a novice at guitar (but improving weekly), but enjoy singing and doing what I feel God is telling me to do...lead others to Him through music.

Every week we have a rotating cast of musicians from our youth group come in and play/sing, and it's really this cool grassroots type of thing. We've put our own spin on some traditional and contemporary songs that get the kids a little more pumped than they are at our Sunday morning hymn-based worship hour. As fun as it is, however, it's a daunting task at times to direct people on what to do, especially since I am as previously noted a novice.

Back to the jitters: our only type of music that we play is Christian. Worship music, more specifically (is there any other kind?). I didn't know how well it would mesh with the crowd we were sure to have on Saturday night. I let a few people talk me into a nervous state, too. I was pretty unsure of how we'd sound/ what people would think about our performance...as were some of the people putting the event together (who asked us to play initially...go figure). So we practiced and it sounded okay, if a bit chaotic. We had 5 guitarists, including me, and relegating who plays what seemed to be a case of "no one is going to be happy". I was stressed.

Saturday seemed to be the longest day. We were to start practicing at 6:00 PM, and I woke up early that day. Luckily for me, my Dad knew the exact words to say. He called me randomly Saturday afternoon as I was fumbling around Wal-Mart aimlessly, and I just opened up. I was a little stressed and it showed. My Dad gave me some real words of encouragement about how we were doing what God called us to, and regardless of what people thought, the focus is on Him anyway. That calmed me more than Dad knew, and helped me to feel more comfortable and the jitters to go away.

So I don't know if we sounded okay or not on Saturday night. Maybe we did, maybe not. But it felt good, and it felt right. I think that's what matters anyway. We sang and played for God alone, and even got a round of applause. But the clapping meant almost nothing compared to the peace that came along with what I feel was our purpose.

new mutemath!

Do yourself a favor and get this. Click the pic. I just bought the vinyl and t-shirt deal, with digital download. Good stuff!

another update...

First off, I'm on Twitter now, so if you do that sort of thing...let's follow each other.

Second, I cut all my hair off. It had gotten pretty long, with the front bangs grown out to the point where they looked decent. It was just too high maintenance for me at this point, and I kind of like the short look. However, teenagers don't. I went to church last night and was setting up for our music and was practically booed out of the building! Teenagers are all about appearance, you know. One girl wouldn't speak to me (!!!) and another asked, "Do you even WANT a girlfriend?!?". I had to laugh at that. Teenagers are funny.

Let's see...other news...I may be going to see the Flight of the Conchords in April in Nashville. I am helping with a D-Now in mid-April that has Todd Agnew as the speaker/worship leader. I have never really been a big Agnew fan, but I am into music...so it couldn't hurt! Plus, those are fun to work anyway.

Also, I'm making my second ski trip to Breckinridge in two weeks. I have been working out and training for this trip for a few months, and still don't feel like I'm ready. We'll see when the time comes, though.

I've made some cool purchases here lately, too. I bought an ION USB Turntable. I have quite a few vinyl albums that I either don't have, can't find, or don't want to buy on CD/mp3. This record player plugs into my computer and I can record the songs into iTunes. Pretty awesome.

Another cool thing I found was a Garmin Nuvi 255W GPS at the soon-to-be-out-of-business Circuit City for $175.00 as opposed to the regular $279.00. My brother got one for Christmas and I've kinda had GPS envy. This was a good find.

I also started a new doctor in Southaven, who seems to think I can kick this kidney stone trouble once and for all. That's refreshing. A cool thing about going to see him is that I can visit one of my favorite little record shops, Disc-O-Tech. It's such a cool little dive place. I found some good music there this week, including a disc from this blues musician by the name of Robert Cray. I went to see him play at Ole Miss a few months ago and the guy was awesome. So that is my music recommendation for the day. "Heavy Picks" by Robert Cray. He's been around since the '70s and still sounds as relevant as ever.

daniel fast

“In those days I, Daniel, was mourning three full weeks. I ate no pleasant food, no meat or wine came into my mouth, nor did I anoint myself at all, till three whole weeks were fulfilled.” Daniel 10:2, 3

I'm on day 5 of my 21 day Daniel fast. I'm not necessarily mourning, but I am in deep prayer over certain things, people, and situations in my life. For example, I'm using this to further my dieting (down to 182, btw) as well as to heal myself from kidney stones. And I'm finding that things are coming to me more easily when I'm fasting. Our music at church the other night was really good...and I'm not being arrogant. Words just came out of my mouth with more meaning. My guitar sounded much better than usual. There was feeling...yearning...hunger.

Last night I sat down and wrote part of a song. I haven't been able to do that in a long time! I have been truly inspired.

Also yesterday, my kidney stone decided to try and hurt. Rather than take a pill, I stopped and prayed. Hard. I laid down on my couch and closed my eyes. After a few minutes I didn't hurt anymore. How about that?

As for the food...I'm not giving up on food all together. What I eat are very simple things. I will eat vegetable soups, vegetables alone, fruit...and that's about it. Other than water. No meats, breads, flavored drinks (except smoothies...they're OK. Though I doubt Daniel had smoothies.).

The good thing is that I already feel better and more refreshed. I'll keep the blog updated on my status.