God gave me a hug today

I had a hard time in this morning's service. Perhaps it didn't help that since I awoke, I was plagued with "what's the point of all this anyway" thoughts about my role as pastor and worship leader in our church. My senior pastor asked me on Thursday that Chris Rice's song: "Untitled Hymn (Come To Jesus)" would be an appropriate song to close our Sunday service with. Because I knew where he was going with the sermon, I agreed. As soon as I did though, a battle began.



If you know this song, you know it is a good, powerful song. Chris' choice of instrumentation and arrangement help make this song what it is. His choice of instruments are none that can be found in our congregation, however. My options? Sound track - absolutely not. Learn the song on piano - maybe but I can kiss my weekend good-bye. Play it on guitar - I guess so because all the other options are worse.

I don't do solos very often and I don't like to finger-pick in public, and I certainly don't do solos while finger-picking my guitar. I don't know if I could really convey how stressful this is for me but I soldiered on and spent time with the song over Friday and Saturday.

To add to this weight, there's this lady in our church who is a professional singer. She is a vocal teacher and a performer. She is amazing! She has a good deal of fame around here. I teach her son guitar and she coaches me vocally in trade. I definitely have the better end of the deal by a long shot but I really enjoy playing and hanging out with her son. This lady is Angela's very close friend too. And she performed this exact song in our service about a year ago with a piano player and a violist, if my memory serves. A moving performance. Lot of tears. And I knew she was going to be in the service.

Now, I know it's not about pleasing people and being amazing, but I am being transparent here. These are some of the things that I battle through leading up to the very moment I play the first note and all throughout a song.

To my standards (I am a perfectionist, remember), I really disappointed myself with how I sang and played the song. Yeah, I know that this is not the point but I gotta give you the back story. . .

I didn't really look at people while singing and afterwards, I just looked down so I have no idea what it did or what it meant for people.

My senior pastor came up to close and pray and I actually schemed that if I could sneak out the side exit without talking to someone, I would race home and hope no one would notice. I even justified that I've never done something like this before and I must be allowed to sneak out every once in a while.

As I was thinking this and with the prayer now over, the mom of one of my friends races to me, on the stage, and says "I sense you need a hug." She gave me a long squeeze, looked at me with tears in her eyes and said again, "I felt you needed a hug." As quickly as she came, she turned and left. That was it.

God gave me a hug today.

I stuck around. It was good. I was encouraged by others and I think I was able to encourage others too.

My mind, heart and soul want to construe the happenings of the last couple of days surrounding this song in a hundred different ways. But all I can come back to is that God gave me what I needed today - a hug.