I Will Praise You When I Cough

Despite the giggling when I came up with this blog entry title, due to the magnificent song, "Praise You in the Storm," it has a real, honest-to-goodness message. And it's quite serious and sobering.

It's still a story about praising God despite the storms raging in our lives. It's still about praising God when things feel out of control and you look around frantically at something to hold onto only to realize there is only one Someone you can hold onto.

I've used this song as a lifesong for a long time. It's been an anchor for me to return to the Lord and my dependence on Him.

And while the title of this blog entry makes me giggle at times, and might make you too, it is as real as any storm.

****

For months I've been practicing with my church's Praise Team for our first big concert. We struggled along the way, had a lot of fun, and as the week drew near, something awful happened:

I lost my voice.

It was partly due to another storm, one much worse, going on in my family's life, that I'm not quite comfortable sharing here yet...but I had been talking to important people on the phone for 3 weeks or so non-stop, trying to get the help we needed; I had cried and become hoarse, and I then developed the flu.

Dress rehearsal came and I had to sing ever-so-softly because I wasn't sure if I would shatter my voice.

I admit I was a bit irate at God.

This is the one thing that has brought me joy throughout this other storm. Why would you take my voice away?

Though people told me that if I had the flu and had no voice, it was obvious I could not perform, I still felt determined to get through it. I practiced, albeit lightly, and my band-mates told me I sounded fine, but my own performance-based-self  was stubborn and demanded better quality.

I sucked on cough drops and chugged tea with honey.

And then I had a realization.

Thank God for kicking me in the pants on occasion to get me to realize the Really Big Stuff.

I am not in control, I realized. My voice is croaky and unstable and I have done all I can to mend it, but I am not the one who can ultimately pull this off.

And to whom am I singing my solo, "Wonderful?"  Sure, to the generous audience listening, but I wanted to pour out my love of Jesus with that song. Does Jesus care how I sound?

Jesus ate with sinners and dined with betrayers. He saw in them beauty and love and worth.

Surely He could forgive my croaky voice and hear my voice praising Him as beautiful.

Surely, He'd find it wonderful?

So the day of the concert, after drinking warm honey-lemon water all day, I went to the final rehearsal feeling good. I had a strange peace about me. I knew whatever voice God wanted me to have would come out that night.

And, friend, it could have been the constant honey-lemon water warming my throat or my lack of talking, but I truly think God smiled once I handed the reigns over to Him.

God loves how I love to praise Him with song.

But God does not love when I get bent out of shape on wanting to sound perfect or as good as so-and-so. He wants my true voice, croaks and all.

So I accepted that. I said: bring on the croak. Bring on the cough; I will still praise the Lord.

So as the storms raged in my life amidst the chaos in my family, as Husband and I were granted a slight reprieve this weekend and he joined the concert as the professional videographer, as I arrived in my Spring Easter dress and heels that were way too uncomfortable, I was comfortable and confident with whatever was going to come out of my mouth: croak or cough or beauty. 

I kept remembering how Jesus sees the beauty in the ugly.

And sometimes, what we think as ugly is beautiful to Jesus. 

So how did the concert go, you ask?

Amazing.

Anointed.

God's Spirit filled the sanctuary - for both musicians and audience.

And my solo came and went and though I did crack a bit toward the end, I just threw up my hands in praise and truly lived the lyrics I sang:

And my life will burn for you
'Cause your light shined in the darkness
I was hopeless
And you lifted up my head
To bring me joy
With a song that breaks
the silence
of my worship
now I'm singing all the day
and forevermore
You will be adored
For you are wonderful...

I believe I almost cried because I live those lyrics. I believe I almost cried because I desperately wanted to send those lyrics straight into the hearts of the listeners. God is wonderful. He is so much more that wonderful; I can't ever put it into mere words.

But I can sing it.

And I did.

****

After the concert, a husband of a band-mate approached me and thanked me.

I feel so uncomfortable with compliments the past few years. But what he said was exactly what I long to hear. This compliment was not about me, but about my love for Jesus.

"I could tell you loved that song. And I could tell you love Jesus."

It took my breath away.

I didn't want my voice to be the one to shine that night; I really didn't. After all the ego-pushing-aside, I wanted Jesus to be the one to shine through the songs we sang.

And praise God, we did!

So it is clear:

Jesus, I will praise you in this storm. I will praise you in the flu. I will praise you when I cough and freak about not being able to perform. And I will praise you when I give up my control and let You carry me through it.

Jesus, You are wonderful! -- photo by Talented Husband

Audience of One ~ (Part Two) ~

A week later and part two of this two-part series now goes up. My apologies. But I do not apologize for the many spiritual revelations that have been laid upon me. I am bathing in grace and gratitude.

So, what happened two weeks ago at our mid-week Lenten service to remind me so much of that January essay? What broke me down to my very core after service as I sat sobbing to God in my car?

Weeks earlier, Pastor had invited me to portray Mary, mother of Jesus, in the Lenten dramatic reading. I was so honored and eager to dust off my greasy and underused acting wheels. I brought the pages home and glanced at them with baited breath. What would I find? A dramatist had written this monologue for Mary and for a contemporary woman - the topic was God never forsaking us and how this woman and Mary, both, had buried their children. Both women, of course, felt like God had forsaken them. God showed them that He had not.

I read the contemporary woman's monologue with interest, impressed with how dramatic it was. Wow, I breathed after reading how she described finding her baby dead from SIDS. That is some dramatic stuff.

I eagerly turned the page to Mary's part.

And what I found was one highlighted paragraph.

My jaw dropped. I read the lines. They were powerful, but the actress inside of me balked, "what can I do with this?"

Thankfully, I immediately recognized the pride and arrogance in that statement. Pastor had chosen me to portray Mary and I would do as good a job as I could.

Still, though, as I put the papers back on the counter, I felt this nagging I want more. I want to show them how good I can act.

I went to bed with conflicting emotions. I knew that I had it all wrong. I had stopped acting a decade before because, even if I didn't know it, God knew that my priorities were out of whack. I depended on those flowers and compliments too much. The sincerest You did wonderful seemed to define me.

I thought long and hard about it as I laid in bed to go to sleep. I would accept the meager paragraph of Mary's. In fact, I would rejoice in portraying her. Yes, I could feel myself becoming more at peace with the situation the more I thought about it and the more I put it into God's hands.

Heal me from my pride, O Lord, I prayed. Thank you for keeping me humble even when I trip over my ego-inflated head. 

The next day I happened to be moving the papers to another part of the kitchen. And it was then that the most amazing thing happened. Husband and Stepdaughter13 were both in the room and I looked up at them with wide, unbelieving eyes. I looked down at the papers again, then back up at them.

"What?" they both inquired. I must have looked like a dope with that goofy and confounded smile on my face.

I explained to them both how I had only found one small paragraph of Mary's to read and how that, at first, had disappointed me, but how I had decided to do my best as Mary and to glorify only God, not myself, in my portrayal.

Then I shared the real amazing grace:

I stumbled upon a paper that had stuck to the others. It held a whole page of highlighted Mary lines. And what the lines said pulled on my heartstrings. They were of a mother crying out to God...her Lord...yet her son...why have you forsaken me? Have you forsaken me?

She tells of how Jesus had been by her side all of her life...and now she was by his side, looking at his wounded side, watching him die.

"When Jesus saw his mother standing there beside the disciple he loved, he said to her, “Dear woman, here is your son.” And he said to this disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from then on this disciple took her into his home." (John 19:26-27 NLT)

I almost cried at how emotional this monologue was. How emotional this hidden page was. I explained with wild emphasis and high-pitched excitement that I was sure that God had kept the entire monologue from me until I could fully understand my undertaking. I was not going to use Mary's dramatized words as a way to show my acting skills. I was not going to pretend I was up on a stage.

I would pray, ceaselessly and with gratitude, that I would glorify God with my portrayal. What a gift this extra page was. Not so I could puff around with a big actor's ego, but because I knew I could put my heart and soul into it and that was a gift God had given me - even as a young child.

So the service came and I took my place at the pulpit while the other reader stood opposite me with Pastor standing in the middle.

My hands grew sweaty and my heart beat a mile a minute. I felt dizzy. I looked across the congregation while Pastor talked and the woman read her words and I prayed.

Then, it was my time.

After the reading, I walked down to my seat. Husband asked if I was okay. I had shed tears during the reading due to the emotional content. Because I had felt Mary's heart beating inside me for just a minute and I wanted to do her justice.

Husband squeezed my hand and smiled softly, said I did a wonderful job.

I couldn't look him in the eye. I sat down and felt a bit winded.

Once service was over, a few more people approached me with kindness and gratitude. I tried to graciously thank them, but say it was all God's doing.

It just so happened that Husband and I had taken two cars because he had to pick the younger two up from Awana. So he and stepdaughter13 left in his car and I sat in mine.

For some odd reason, I sunk into my seat and kept my car dark. Sobs escaped as I felt my heart and head begin to yell at each other. I still felt a longing for compliments, for those flowers from high school plays.

It was an attack. An attack of the ego and the enemy both. And the enemy knew my weakest point:

I started to mourn the fact that my mother, who attended every play with devoted regularity, was not at this service.

And I missed her. I cried with inconsolable grief.

But I shook my head out of the fog the enemy had settled around me and realized: she had been there. She is with God; she can see everything I do. And of course she is proud of me.

But I still beat myself up for wanting the limelight, the praise.

Easy, I heard myself saying. You're still learning. 

So I am an addict. Once an addict, always an addict, I suppose. Alcoholics remain alcoholics, no matter how long they stay sober. It just means that they always have a weakness, a thorn in their side that makes them susceptible to falling.

An attention addict? A praise addict? I don't know.

I do know, however, that being an addict does not define me. I am not defined by my need - former or present - to feel praised by mankind.

For I know that
"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" (2 Corinthians 5:17 NIV)

And, I strongly feel, that is all I need to know.

My identity is not an actress nor a writer, a wife nor a stepmother. Not even a motherless daughter or a victim of trauma.

I am a child of God.

And for God I live my life.

God is in the audience. He is the only One who is always in the seat, never leaving, never forsaking. God is my Audience of One. 

~

other Bible verses about addiction I have found helpful:

"The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure." (1 Corinthians 10:13 NLT)


"God blesses those who patiently endure testing and temptation. Afterward they will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him. And remember, when you are being tempted, do not say, “God is tempting me.” God is never tempted to do wrong, and he never tempts anyone else. Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death." (James 1:12-15 NLT) 

What tempts you? Big or small? 

Audience of One ~(Part One)~

I initially wrote this on January 20, 2012 but never found the time to type it up as a blog entry. Something happened last night at our mid-week Lenten service, however, that directly related to this very topic and brought the whole thing once again toppling down upon my shoulders. I knew I had come across this topic before and so I looked back in an old journal and found this essay. I type it now in hopes of better explaining what happened last night. I will publish this entry alone and then write a "part two," if you will, explaining how the very same topic visited (haunted) me last night. 
Thank you for grace. 
 
I was a dancer as a child. I was a singer, too. And an actress as I entered my teenage years. I quickly learned, at an early age, the instant gratification of performance.

At summer camp between ages 7-12, I was in every talent show. I remember being 9 years old and people  humorously calling it "the Lisa Brodsky Show."

Because...

I played a flute solo. I sang a song, I danced a solo, I read a poem, I joined a dance ensemble.

I loved performing. I loved entertaining friends and family and, I admit, I loved the flowers and praise I'd get after every performance.

Particularly in high school when I got leads in plays such as "You Can't Take It With You" and many others, I fell in love with performing. People said I had "the acting bug."

Ironically, college theatre brought disappointment and disenchantment. I continued to perform in years to come, though, this time featuring in open mic's reading my poetry - my other love and talent besides acting.

My tumultuous 20s were peppered with many literary successes - both in performance and in the literary world, all of which garnered me praise from everyone around me.

Yet I did not feel fulfilled. I was still searching for that all-elusive, all-encompassing approval.

What I've learned about who I need to please, who I "perform for," since becoming a Christian has been a gigantic milestone in my life. I suddenly realized why theatre and I stepped away from each other: not because I was bad or wrong, but I did seek the wrong audience to give me an identity.

Those strangers in the seats couldn't tell me who I was. Even friends and family who attended every performance did not have the power to tell me who I was. Since I decided to follow Christ's ways, I've felt a distinct push away from the performing arena. Now when I try to go to an open mic, I don't feel that same drive to perform.

For a while, I walked around a little lost, blind, and confused. Why had something I loved stopped fulfilling me? I continued to read my Bible, my Christian living books, listen to my radio programs. The more I read, the more I realized that for all these years, I had it all wrong! I sought fame and attention. I thrived on the praise of others so much that I became an addict.

An addict of praise which drove my head down instead of pointing my eyes up.

I now know that I have only One that I need to please, perform for, answer to.

God is my Audience of One. And when I do things that please Him, the blessings I receive are far greater, far more fulfilling than any flower bouquet I could ever get after a show.