Humbled

What a weekend.

Wow.

Just... wow.

I have to say, I'm pretty cynical about most things. Not exactly one of my best personality traits, but it often makes for good conversations, I guess. But today I have something to brighten your week.

Church this Sunday was amazing. Yeah the sermon was good. Steve had some excellent things to say in his usual, old-school way. But that's not the Steve that made an impact this week.

I play my electric guitar in the worship band 3 weeks a month. Some days it's a bit tough to get up, arrive at 7am for rehearsal, and be happy for the next 5 hours (we can debate the difference between acting happy when you're not, and all the finer points of being genuine in front of a crowd when you don't "feel" like it, at a later date). Most mornings I do my best to make it through practice, and by 3rd service, I'm pretty locked in. But this week, I was having a rough time of it. Aside from my attitude which I have been struggling with lately, I was in awe for a good portion of the service. Not like hero worship awe, but just freaking amazed at the scope and depth of the situation I was witnessing, and praising God for the whole thing.

Let me back up a little. Here's the history side (yes Mr. Frey, you were right, it's important, I deserved that grade from your class and take back all the comments about irrelevance I made) so that you can catch up if you're not "in the know."

We have 2 primary electric guitar players in the band. I myself play rhythm and Steve plays mostly lead. We both fill in with acoustic when necessary. Steve is the guy that stands in the back tearing it up, content to be ignored and left to do his thing. I'm the dork in the front, bouncing around expressing myself visually, as well as musically. I don't know Steve very well, and I love to give him a hard time about playing Fender's (Godin ftw!), and we both seem to have fallen in love with Digitech's RP series processors. He loves Journey tunes, so I make fun of him for playing "girley music." Though he did loan me a Red CD Thursday that I am completely enjoying. Maybe he doesn't have such bad taste in music after all. =)

But about a year ago he let us all know that he had cancer. I don't know all the medical nitty gritty, but the growth was in his tongue, and they were concerned about treatment. The doctors scheduled him for chemo or radiation (I don't remember) but were worried that if that failed the only option would be surgery. If surgery were performed, he would probably lose so much of his tongue that eating would be difficult and speaking would be impossible. I covered guitar for most of that summer while he was in treatment. We got updates on his progress, and things went well. Last I heard he's cancer free (though he does have to do the usual visits and rechecks).

So there I stood Sunday morning playing my guitar preparing for the special music and I was just amazed. Steve had written, and was going to sing, the song we were going to play. He strapped on his acoustic guitar, stepped forward to the mic, and began singing and playing this amazing tune. I couldn't get it out of my mind how amazing this was. Here's a guy that just a year ago was wondering how much longer he'd be able to talk, now standing in front of a band singing a song he wrote.

And I just can't stop thinking about how cool that is.

Sure puts getting upset about the toy's on the living room floor in a little better perspective, doesn't it?