The Jumping In and The Shrinking Back

Anyone that's ever been swimming in the summer knows this feeling. You're standing on the edge of the pool. The heat of the day is raging all around you, and you know in your logical mind that nothing would feel better than to plunge yourself into that water. Do a few flips. Backstroke around awhile. But yet you stand there, testing the water with your big toe, and feeling somewhere inside you that the last thing you want to do is jump. When I consider my life, I think that this feeling is the most prevalent. I have many opportunities to network, to put myself out there, both musically and personally... and I stand there on the edge of the pool. "Will I be rejected?" "Am I wasting this person's time?" "No one is buying the record, it must not be any good." I have been walking a fine line between wanting to jump in front of the camera, waving my arms wildly, and slinking into a cave where no one can see me. What this reveals to me, as I pray, and think on it all, is a lack of faith. And more than that. I'm judging myself much like I've judged others in the past. I'm convicted, and then it begins anew. I know a few things:

1. I am God's. He loves me fiercely and with white hot jealousy
2. I am blessed beyond measure. A beautiful wife, a son, a new house, some measure of talent and a room full of expensive musical gear
3. The sum of my works (good or bad) is a drop in the bucket against Christ's work for me on the cross.
4. Every Sunday, I get to help lead others to the endless well of God's grace, love and greatness.

I actually have considered quitting music a few times. I know that thinking like that is straight from the bowels of hell. So this entry, I suppose is a quasi-public acknowlegement of my weakness, a request for prayer, and in its own way, a praise to the God that can take all of this fear away.

"I lift up my eyes to the hills.
    From where does my help come?
My help comes from the Lord,
    who made heaven and earth.

  He will not let your foot be moved;
    he who keeps you will not slumber.
   Behold, he who keeps Israel
    will neither slumber nor sleep.

  The Lord is your keeper;
    the Lord is your shade on your right hand.
  The sun shall not strike you by day,
    nor the moon by night.

 The Lord will keep you from all evil;
    he will keep your life.

 The Lord will keep
    your going out and your coming in
    from this time forth and forevermore."

Psalm 121: 1-8

Thanks for reading.