I am so behind on Writing 101 assignments, but better late than never, right? I’ve been stuck on a few, so at this point I’m just skipping around to ones where I go “Oh. I can do that. I know exactly what to do for that!”

So, here is the third assignment. I’ll get to the second one eventually…

Write about the three most important songs in your life — what do they mean to you?

Moments of worship are… difficult to define. But it is moments of worship that seem to be defining moments in my life – those are the moments that sustain me, sometimes for only minutes or hours, but other times for days. Weeks. Even years.

Those moments when I finally say, “I’m going to stop trying to do everything in my own strength. Because I just don’t have enough. I will set everything aside, and focus on Someone else who always puts things in perspective.”

So these are three songs that I keep going back to – songs that have sustained me for years.

Adonai – Avalon

I don’t remember how long ago it was when I first heard this song – but I remember the day itself quite vividly.

I’m pretty sure I was still in high school. The local Christian radio station was putting on its first (and sadly no longer running) Freedom Live concert – a (at first) free all-day concert that usually fell on/near July 4^th. By the end of its run, it was no longer free, and no longer ran all day. Oh well. Those things have their time.

This was not the first Avalon song I’d fallen in love with. But this song was one I heard for the first time live.

I had no idea how hard the next few years would be, and how much I would need to look back on this moment and remember what it was like to worship without the knowledge of how heavy burdens could possibly be.

Even today, more than ten years later, if I turn on this song and close my eyes, I can go back to the moment. Back to that crowded church field, waiting on our picnic blanket with my siblings as my parents went to find food, while people streamed past because Avalon was not the main attraction (that was Steven Curtis Chapman), and finding that moment of worship in a moment where many people didn’t even notice.

Restless – Audrey Assad

I don’t remember the first time I heard this song.

It came on the radio, and I remember hearing bits of it, but for a very long time it seemed that I would always get a phone call or an interruption of some sort whenever this song came on. When I was finally able to catch the name of it, I looked it up online and finally was able to hear all of it.

While Adonai is very much a song about God’s greatness and power, while still being a song about His love, Restless is very much an intimate love song.

And being restless is something I know so very well. There is always something to be done, something that is urgent, and it is nearly impossible for quiet moments to just happen. We have to make time for quiet moments.

I have to (re)learn that even in the midst of busy-ness, there is quietness and rest, if I can just hear (listen to) His voice beyond the distractions.

Let Me Rediscover You – Downhere

Everyone – in every part of their lives – has dry spells.

Whether it is as simple as cooking, as intimate as faith, or as complex as… writing a novel. Ugh.

Everything goes up and down – and as much as I wish for something constant in my life, I’m coming to embrace that the only semi-constant I can rely on is the rising and setting of the sun. But even that is finite.

But my God is infinite. His mercies are new every morning, and His love is never-failing, and even when I’ve fallen away, He is always there.

He is constant, but because He is also infinite, I will never be able to comprehend Him completely in this life.

There will always be something new He wants to teach me. Something new He wants to use to woo me, or something new He wants me to do to show His love to someone else.

He doesn’t live in a box. He simply reaches into my box in an effort to pull me out so that I can constantly rediscover Him.

So that I can fall in love with Him over and over again.

Today’s twist: You’ll commit to a writing practice. The frequency and the amount of time you choose to spend today — and moving forward — are up to you, but we recommend a minimum of fifteen uninterrupted minutes per day.

Well. I will start this part of it today (September 27^th). I worked on just this post for an hour, so I’ve definitely done my fifteen minutes for the day. Now to keep it up tomorrow!