This is love.

I was playing in both the morning and evening sets at the retreat for Saturday. Point of concern for me, given that while I love music and making music, I consider myself a mediocre musician at best, in contrast with everyone else on the worship team. Also, while I played violin in the school orchestra, I now only pick up the instrument to play for the retreat once a year, so basically all my muscle memory has disappeared. But I've found that even in my reluctance year after year, God always comes through and shows me why all the stress is unnecessary and why the experience is so worthwhile.

For the evening set, this was probably the group's hardest. We had set aside an hour and a half of our free time to practice, which we thought would be more than enough. But then we spent at least forty minutes attempting to work out our first song. For whatever reason, there was always something a little awkward about the way it sounded, and we couldn't figure out what was wrong. Finally we moved on, and the rest of the rehearsal was just as uneventful. When it came time for dinner, we were all miserably thinking about how we were going to pull off playing the set that none of us were hungry. Victor suggested we keep practicing, and somehow in the extra hour, it all came together.

The worship for the evening set ended up being the best of the entire retreat--and you would have to have been with the worship team as we doggedly practiced to truly understand how miraculous it was that the music sounded like it did in the end. It was all God, and as someone who prefers not to be the center of attention, it was one of the first times I was part of the group leading worship and still felt His presence as intensely as if I had been in the audience. While we should have practiced more, I feel like many of us were so focused on making things perfect and not messing up the music that we were losing sight of the reason why we were there. And as we were playing, our worries and emotional baggage fell away...and there was just God in all His glory.

A perfect example of the theme for the retreat, "Learning to Love," was what Felicia and Christina did for us after our addendum rehearsal. Noticing that none of us had come to dinner, they smuggled sandwiches out of the cafeteria, so we wouldn't have to go hungry. Victor saw what they had done and said, "This is love." It moved my heart that even in our imperfections, God cares and is always watching out for us.