And So Begins Midterms Week...

Got to sleep till 9:00 this morning! Amazing. Haha. Today we had our first midterm in Ear Training...wasn't so bad, actually! I feel like I did pretty well, which gives me confidence for the rest of the week. The melodic dictation part wasn't even so hard!

Tomorrow we have Keyboarding & Songwriting midterms, & I'm definitely the most worried about the Songwriting midterm. But then Sam pointed out that it is only 10% of our total grade, whereas our actual SONG is worth 35%. I'm feeling pretty good about my song, Stef helped me put music to a poem I wrote a couple of years ago, & she helped me write a chorus. She is AMAZINGLY talented, & she's really made it sound great, so I'm not too worried about that part. So now I'm not as scared of failing the actual midterm...hopefully I won't, but you get it. Keyboarding should be a cinch, scales & chords & inversions are old hat for me. A little nervous about having to play a song in different keys, but overall I think I'll do fine.

Yesterday all the girls met at me & Kate's house & started reading a book called "Hinds Feet On High Places." It's an allegory, & it reminds me alot of Pilgrim's Progress. I'm trying to decide if I've read it before...the story feels familiar, but I didn't recognize the title at all. Either way, it's a really great book & I know God is going to speak to me alot through it.

Okay, time to go study for Songwriting some more. Pray for me. I'm only halfway joking.

Week One Back, Complete.

Well, all things considered, the first week back went by pretty quickly. If it keeps going like this it's going to be May in no time.

Worship this morning was really great...God was really speaking to me through Psalm 86, it was incredible. Then Kal brought a word about how we are all in the place that we're supposed to be right now, even if it feels really restrictive. He used the example of getting stuck driving behind a snow plow (something that's happened to a few of us the last couple of days); it's frustrating because you can't see around the thing because it's so huge, & it moves so slowly that all you want to do is go around it. But really, it's the safest place to be because if you're following the snow plow you're on the clearest part of the road. And that's where God wants us right now! He's going in front of us, clearing the way, & it might be slow moving, but even if you were to go around the freaking giant snow plow, you'd be in the middle of a blizzard & you couldn't see anything anyway. Wow...I definitely needed to hear that.

Stewardship In Life was with Carol today...she talked about eating healthy & exercising, which is something I could for sure do more of. Bleh. One of these days I will get motivated.

Drum lesson was good...we're learning odd time signatures. Suuuuck! Today we worked on 5/4 timing. What the crap. How does that even work. Definitely gotta practice this week.

Now I am hanging out with Stef, so this concludes this blog. Haha.

Humility.

Oy. Today should have been a snow day...all the public schools were out, but we still had school. Blech. Instead of Prophetic Worship today we started a new class with Tre called Personal Development. We started going through the book Humility by Andrew Murray, & Teresa shared some of her own testimony.

I have to be honest & say that I really didn't like what God was speaking to me in that class. Over the past year or so, I've gotten really prideful...especially since coming here. I always thought that pride was like...thinking you're better than everyone else or something. But really, insecurity is pride. Worry is pride. Comparing yourself to anyone (for better or worse) is pride. And God started showing me all these areas in my life that are totally prideful & that I'm totally missing the point in those areas. But humility in it's truest form is knowing who God is & who I am. I'm slowly learning what it means to die to myself every day. Nothing is about me. Nothing is about what I want. Nothing is even about what anyone else wants or expects...all that matters is that I am allowing myself to be an empty vessel that God can use to work through me. So going through this book should be interesting...I know I need to change some things...but now how do I do that?

We had reviews for Songwriting & Ear Training midterms today. I'm going to suck at the melodic dictation for Ear Training, & I'm pretty nervous about the Songwriting one...I'm not a musician, I don't know stuff about notation! I'm a little bit overwhelmed right now, so pray that I can relax enough to study & do well on all my tests next week.

Also pray that it keeps snowing so we won't have school tomorrow. Haha.

Songwriting With John Cooper.

AMAZING DAY.

Leading worship was incredible this morning. It was so anointed, & Trefor brought a word about how the students of this school year are going to be different than students of past years. We are going to be tall towers in our cities & we will have firm foundations & do amazing things for God that we can't even imagine yet. Our year is to be unified & grow more than any previous year has. Wow. SO encouraging.

Keyboarding today was good, & I feel confident about the midterm.

I read through chapter 2 of Pursuit of God & WHOA it totally rang true for me. It talked about Abraham being willing to sacrifice Isaac, & Tozer made the point that God asked him to sacrifice his son because Abraham was in danger of loving Isaac MORE than he loved God. But God never wanted Abraham to ACTUALLY kill Isaac, He wanted him to be WILLING to give everything up to Him so that there was no question of Lordship in Abraham's life. Mind=Blown. It was completely eye-opening to look at it that way! This book is going to change my life. READ IT.

John & Korey came in for Songwriting today...3 hours with John Cooper = nearly 8 pages of notes & sore abs from laughing so hard. It was hilarious & fun, but SO practical & helpful too. He gave us each printouts of the lyrics to the songs One Day Too Late & Monster (both off of Skillet's latest album Awake), played them for us on his iPod, & then broke each song down line by line & explained his thought process for why he changed certain words or where he wanted to rhyme, or how he decided what the chorus should sound like compared to the verse. I have to have a Panhead moment & say that it was really hard to keep from having a stupid smile on my face as he was going through all of that...how many people get to hear all the details of how their favorite songwriter from their favorite band writes his songs? It was an incredible experience & he gave us some really practical advice for writing. Fastest 3 hours of my life, no joke.

I went to Common Grounds with Lydia after school, & it was so great to just talk about what God's been speaking to us since we've been back at school. God has been speaking to me more about getting involved in the fight against trafficking, & Lydia encouraged me to be in prayer for those that are enslaved & just really intercede for them. I had never thought of it that way, but it totally makes sense.

Time for Bible reading & then bed. This day has been too exciting for my own good.

Long Day...Short Post.

I feel like so much happens in one day I can't even keep up.

We started reading Pursuit of God by Tozer today. Wow. How much more simple & honest can you get, really? It's going to be really challenging, but it will be an awesome read, I can just tell.

Today we had class with Teresa & she just talked to us about really getting into the Bible & memorizing Scripture. I need to do this. Like seriously...I hate memorizing, but I love it when I'm in a situation & the perfect verse just pops into my head. If you were stranded on an island with no Bible, how would you read it? You have to know it.

My team leads worship tomorrow, then we have Keyboarding in the morning & John Cooper in the afternoon! So excited!

1st Day Back.

Today was actually a really good day. After worship we had about an hour where we just each talked about what God was speaking to us over the break, & it was amazing how He was speaking to me about at least ONE thing that each of the other students said. We followed up with more prayer time & it was actually just really refreshing, & a good reminder of why I'm here to begin with.

Scott continued his eschatology teaching today. Holy crap. I never knew there were so many end times theories. I can see alot of things I agree with & don't in each one...I grew up on more of a dispensationalism background, so I tend to lean more towards that, even though there are some things in the true dispensationalist theory that don't really line up to me. But the amillennialism makes sense in some ways too...it all comes down to rapture or not. I think that there could be a rapture, but it's not like I'm expecting it every day when I wake up. God can do what He wants. Technically no one will really know until Christ returns anyway.

After lunch we had midterm reviews in Ear Training & Theory. Ugh. I'm nervous. But we don't have to be at school till 9:45 monday, tuesday, & wednesday of next week, & we get out at 2:30 every day, so that will help ALOT. ALSO! Found out today that John Cooper is coming in to teach our Songwriting class on wednesday! Awweessoome! Guess which day I'M looking forward to most this week? Haha.

Worship Teams were actually not bad considering I haven't practiced in two weeks. We started learning Greatest One by The Spark (which you can hear on their Myspace, second song on the playlist)...pretty sure they could have picked an easier one to start off with, but hey. Haha. It's kind of hard to play, but really fun when I get it down.

Umm...I think that about wraps it up! I'm glad I came back, after all.

I'm Going To Be Honest.

I don't want to go back.

I don't feel like anyone there cares if I'm there or not, & that it wouldn't affect anyone if I decided not to go back. Maybe this is just the enemy trying to get in my head, but I just don't see the point. When I get back I face midterms, which I don't think I'll be able to do that well on, plus I have to write an entire song, which I've tried to start a hundred times...I'm not a musician. I'm not a songwriter. I don't understand notation, I play drums! And not even that well!

I guess it doesn't matter. I leave tomorrow at 6am, whether I like it or not.

I need prayer. I can't do this on my own.