10:42 pm 4/21/09---9 more days

Well my day today started driving as usual to Brandon. Then back to Clinton at lunch to see Amanda get an award, then back to Brandon, and I’m staying at the Boudreax’s tonight to keep from adding 25 more miles to the hour an a half I have already experienced today.
It’s feeling more and more like Spring, and the cold weather is really gone this time I think. The change in weather and seasons has always affected the music I listen to. I can tell you right now what I was listening to this month last year--Jason Upton, and Jason Morant I do believe, and yes John Mayer Trio. Whenever I listen to one of those songs on those cds right now I think about what I was doing when I listened to it on a regular basis. I remember laying on a bed in a dorm at New Orleans Baptist Seminary with my ear buds in, falling asleep listening to Jason Morant’s “Open” album, whenever I was on Mission Lab during Spring Break, and Jeremy McMahan nudging me to wake up because we were leaving to go somewhere. Or driving around belhaven trying to find the park where me and Jeremy were going to have a cook out on a Wednesday night for the middle school. All of this going on while talking to Perry Gagliano and back and forth with Buster about a job with Crossgates. I remember scheduling my first time to play on the last Sunday of April. --which would be a year ago this week. --Wow all of that to say. Listening to 5 seconds of one song can take me back to all of those memories, and I feel the anticipation that I once felt about something.
I put a Rita Springer cd in my car yesterday that perry gave me Sunday. The Lord only knows what He will lead me through between this time next year, Next April when I listen to of these songs and I remember everything I feel right now.--Getting ready to get married. Amanda moving in with Paul and Melinda Hand. Me leaving in a house that has looked like I was moving out for the past 2 months, driving to Clinton everyday to sleep and turn back around the next morning.
This morning in staff devotion, the ladies from Calvary Baptist Church came to share about their ministry. Them coming to visit holds more weight than just another staff devotion. The two summers I worked at Central Hills (04 and 05) I counseled a group from that church in downtown Jackson. The first summer a particular boy named Demarcus came up to me and wanted to know how to become a Christian, I shared the Gospel with Him and he prayed to receive Jesus. I could only pray that he understood everything and knew what He had done. That fall at school I had to go down to Calvary and serve at Bible Club on Monday nights. Demarcus was there. I spent a semester around him, maintaining a relationship. I even went with a group from there delivering turkeys to families at thanksgiving and went to his house. That next summer as I went back to work there, that same group of kids came back, except I wasnt their counselor. The group that I was assigned to did not show up so I was placed with the Calvary kids after all. At the end of the week Demarcus came to me, and said to me “ do you remember last year when we sat by that tree and I prayed to receive Jesus, and I said yes. He said, “ well I did mean any of it. I was only trying to do what everyone else was doing. But now I know, I understand.” Right then, Demarcus came to know the Lord. I dont know where he is today, I never saw him after that summer. I think about that, how the Lord orchestrates. Beautiful. The paper work, the money, the decisions, the jobs, the Monday nights, the classes, the everything that brought me and that kid back to the same place the next year. To go after the lost sheep and leave the rest. His love is big, and that was a small example. Nothing like it.
As I sat listening this morning, to new stories like that from those ladies, I began to cry. Thinking of how he takes small things and shows us how much He cares for us that He would show himself to broken people like us. Hearing of the greatness of the Lord to put people and circumstances together so that he can show His glory. I am overwhelmed.
Whether a song comes on my iPod, or I hear stories from individuals that remind me of my own, I remember what He has done for me, and get a glimpse of what He is doing today.