enjoying gross coffee…

this morning I woke up at 7:45 in a hotel bed. for some reason the first thing I thought about was the Psalm “…he leads me by still waters and restores my soul” and I thought, yeah that sounds nice… so I walked to the lobby, got a gross cup of coffee, walked down to a little bench, that sits next to a river. I started thinking about my life…

When I was a youngster my dream was to be a “professional musician”. I remember always saying “I want to be a session player” (which is someone who gets hired to play in the studio on peoples records)… I wanted to be in a band that travels. I remember the first time I walked through an airport with my bass and feeling like I had made it. I wanted to write songs. I wanted to have a studio and produce records.  

so, fast forward a decade and a half… what am I doing?

I play on people’s records.
I’m on the road playing music way more than I’m not.
I’m in a few bands.
I write songs.
I have my own studio.
I produce records.

but the problem is, like everything, it has lost its appeal. I don’t get excited about doing any of these things. I sometimes toy with the thought of turning my phone off and not showing up at the airport so I can just sleep in my bed for more than 2 nights in a row. When I’m in the studio a lot of times I’m wanting the day to be over so I can go hang out with friends. I go hang out and I can’t wait to be in bed so I can go to sleep. I lay in bed wishing it was tomorrow morning so I can have coffee. I produce records and think the whole time, can’t wait till this is done so I can hear the finished product. I start writing a song and want to hurry and finish it so I can play it for  someone. I’m realizing that maintaining this attitude is exhausting.

so, I’m sitting here on this bench by the water thinking “now what”. So I turned on some music on my iPad and said a simple prayer asking Jesus to speak to me. I tried to open my iPad bible app but it said I needed to be online, so I got online. I heard the email alerts and thought, I’ll check those later. I started reading psalm 16. I got to verse 11, “in your presence is fulness of joy eternal pleasures at your right hand”. I don’t think I have felt either one of those things in a long time.

after pondering that I checked my email to see a good friend of mine had written me an encouraging email and shared a blog post she had written that talked about appreciating where you are in this moment and not always wanting to be somewhere else or doing something better.

I thought back to Psalm 16:10. “in your presence is fullness of joy…” I’m not real great at retaining knowledge so I broke it down for myself. in His presence….fullness… of joy.

I started thinking about John 4 where Jesus offered the samaritan woman a drink from a well that will never run dry. He told her the water she had been drinking from (jacob’s well) will only leave her thirsty and unsatisfied. But if she drinks from his well she would never thirst again. This water would continually well up eternal life.

Jacob’s well makes me not want to go to the airport. It makes me want to rush through recording sessions that I used to only dream of being a part of. It makes me want to be gone when I’m home and home when I’m gone. It leaves me parched. It does not give me fullness of joy. It drains the pleasure out of living my dream.

I think I spend too much time drinking from jacob’s well and not enough time drinking from the one that offers eternal life.

… I was sitting there thinking through all this then the sprinklers turned on and soaked me.
but I got way more out of my time on the bench by the still water and my gross coffee than I would have sleeping in till “lobby call”.

- jon