“This is the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.”
-Psalm 118:24 (NLT)

“Be alive this first and holy day! Because order has been created out of the chaos, light out of the dark so that you can see, touch, taste, and smell and tell this day that you have never seen before, because it has never been before…that this is the day you will never see again.”

-Fredrick Buechner, The Alphabet of Grace

What is is about music that captures something in sound waves that sometimes you just can’t express in words? I read recently in Anne Lammots book, Traveling Mercies, that, “Maybe it’s because music is about as physical as it gets: your essential rhythm is your heartbeat: your essential sound, the breath. We’re talking temples of noise, and when you add tender hearts to this mix, it somehow lets us meet in places we couldn’t get to any other way.”

Last night I got see the Dave Matthews Band in concert with a friend of mine. Her and I have wanted to go to a live DMB concert for close to 10 years. What’s funny is that I was hardly looking forward to it.

My mind and heart have been full and rapidly filling with worry. Things in my control and things clearly out of my control. Nonetheless, when you’re in active recovery,( or more like, just an active human) you have to guard your heart against whatever may rob you of your serenity so that you don’t give yourself an excuse to engage in your negative behaviors. I am called to be endlessly self-aware. Sometimes that just sucks. Ignorance seems like such bliss sometimes.

As easy as it is to go to God, my creator, with whom I can share my struggles and anxieties with, it seems just as easy to go ahead and pick them all off the floor on my way out the door.
I will feel peace and rest because I can trust God with the outcomes of all things, but like a slow leak in a tire…I always seem to allow my trust and faith to deflate. I scurry to grab all of my concerns and stuff them back into my hands and pockets. Squashing my peace and taking steps backwards. The great news is, God doesn’t let us stay there for very long if we are committed to following his lead out of the mazes and traps.

I headed into the concert with a heavy heart I was trying to conceal and ignore, but I left feeling revived.

Being removed from all of your “stuff”, if only for a few hours is good for the soul.
Necessary.

Being reminded of the beauty of it ALL.

The beauty of music played with heart and passion. The beauty of people, strangers, being nice and kind to each other. The beauty of long lasting friendships. The beauty of certain music being in the background soundtrack of my life. The beauty of God orchestrating all that I see and experience just for me. Specifically for me, that I might see His goodness in ALL things.

I pray that I wouldn’t squander a thing.

Not. One. Thing.

“Oh well, celebrate we will
Ooh cause life is short but sweet for certain
Hey, we’re climbing two by two
To be sure these days continue
Things we cannot change

Dave Matthews Band, “Two Step”