DISCONTENTMENT

On September 4th I cracked. I drove six hours to Boone, North Carolina, walked into an arena where 700 kids and their youth ministers sat waiting for me to play and I thought to myself, "I'm thirty-one. There has to be more for me. This feels hollow. It doesn't matter."

A couple weeks ago I was in El Salvador visiting impoverished children and their families. I heard about molestation and rape, about child labor on coffee plantations, about the rich oppressing the poor. I also saw the Church in El Salvador, with support from the Church in the U.S., fighting against these heinous forces and winning. I thought to myself, "I'm thirty-one. I've never felt more alive. This feels substantive. This matters."

In the months before that trip I'd grown restless in my role as a Christian musician. I made myself learn how this industry works: How radio stations operate, how labels operate, how mainstream music operates. I read about art and faith and how they "should" combine. I prayed. I talked to other artists. I digested everything I could about this work I do in search of a purpose, an ethic or direction with spiritual substance at it's center - something that would matter to me. I wasn't looking for God in this business. I know He's here. I wasn't looking for the godly. I've met them as well. I was looking for what God wanted ME to be about in this business. I was looking for direction, a purpose, a point to my career. And, honestly, I was looking for a way to crack the system, play the game, as a way of doing something bigger for God - as if God sees what I've done and am doing as worthless and small right now. I'm an idiot sometimes.

This trip to El Salvador didn't create this struggle in me. If I hadn't gone to El Salvador this would have been a phase. It would have passed. El Salvador wove it into me. It made magnified my questions and made finding an answer imperative and not elective.

I've counseled and encouraged and provoked to righteousness countless people over the last five years. God's done that through me and in spite of me. I've felt useful. It's felt substantive, like every day mattered. But it doesn't any more. Now I feel discontent. As my best friend, who is going through this same thing in his life, said tonight - I feel "antsy". I feel small. Less than I was made to be. I feel ready for more or different. I feel uninspired by music making and industry and money and so much else that once held my attention.

I don't think my life before this period of discontent was shallow though, or off course in any way. I don't think my once caring about music and my work and all the rest of it was disobedient or less spiritually mature of me. I just think something's changed in me. The part in me that allowed me to fully engage in those things is worn out or gone altogether. The part that made me want to be PRIMARILY about those things is out of order. I'm broken.

Most of the time these days this discontent drives me to reading and researching poverty, theologies and theologians and ethicists who've written about these things that seem to be fueling my brokeness. I told Becky I feel like the main character in Close Encounters of the Third Kind - the guy unexplainably urged from within to make mountains of mashed potatoes and mud, not knowing what this new fascination of his means or if it means anything at all. And Becky feels the same way. Odd.

And this discontent is usually these days driving me to prepare for the answer to the questions "What CAN I be inspired to be or do now? What's next? Why this interest in other things suddenly?" I'm preparing for this answer by selling my house, simplifying my life, eliminating the money factor in my obedience. If God says "go" or "do" or "be" someday I want to be obedient without hesitation or friction financially or in relationships with label, friends or family. I'm preparing them all for the phone call I hope to get from God eventually that could demand something from me and will surely dislodge me from this discontent I'm in.

Most of the time this discontent fills me with nervous energy, anticipation of what's next. It usually invigorates while irritating, fills me with longing for something I've yet to find and makes me content to wait for that something while enjoying life here and now. It makes me silent for hours and then suddenly explodes into a commaless rant or passionate unwieldy blog posting or essay. This discontent makes me "antsy" but it's usually good. It has been good - very good and positive.

Until September 4th. I still don't know why but it changed direction. I got angry. (I sort of know why: ONE trivial complaint seemed extra trivial that night in light of the serious issues faced backed in El Salvador for starters.) I'm ashamed that I did but I did. Really angry. Makes no sense. Great promoter. Great audience. Great food. Great travel with friends. Great show. I'm still not sure all of what or who I was angry about. Every attempt to put it in writing or conversation has failed. All I know for sure is that I felt like I didn't belong, I wasn't what was needed and the crowd wasn't what I needed. I didn't appreciate them and they didn't appreciate me but it was deeper than that. Like I said I can't explain it with words. It's a sense that can't fit in my mouth at all. I didn't fit. And not just for that night but it struck me that maybe for always now I won't fit. That scared/scares me. And that for some bizarre reason made me mad at everything including myself.

So tonight I got honest with God and a good friend. I shot straight with both. If I could quit music, if I had no contract today, I would. (Though I have no idea where I'd go or what I'd do.) I'd leave. Not because I hate it or anyone in it, but because I don't feel like I fit here right now. This isn't me right now. There's something else that needs me. Maybe for a month and maybe for the rest of my life. Something needs me. This job, these people, this industry, this country maybe, doesn't anymore. But I'm staying - for now. And I'll stay joyfully. I haven't been told what's next. And I look forward to counseling and provoking with my music every chance I get until God breaks this silence and explains to me in small words where I'm needed. In the meantime I'm not angry anymore. It left me as quickly as it hit me. And thankfully no real damage was done.

I say all this here on a blog - which is very uncomfortable and unconventional - because some of what I've written here lately has been under the influence of this stuff I'm sorting through. Some of the angry, as fleeting as it was, seeped into my words here. I regret that. But I'm also thankful for it. It was honest. If there's one thing I know God wants me to keep being it's that - honest. He uses that. There are scores of Christians content right now with arriving at death safely and filling the time between now and then with religion and routine. They believe - as I once did - that believing is enough and that after a sinner's prayer we're to take a seat, blend in and enjoy the scenery. I've been against that from the beginning of my career. I've been against that since a car accident in high school disrupted MY scenery, filled me with discontent, made me thirsty for more and taught me how too write songs in the process. My reason for doing this job in the first place was to infiltrate an industry feeding this kind of placid piousness with a loud unrelenting dose of jagged costly discipleship - substance. Now some of those religious people thankfully come here. They're my fans. They're my friends. And I want them to see me crack and break and struggle and fight God right now. I want them to see what a faith that is in flux and maliable and sometimes ugly looks like in the fire, on the anvil, under the abuse of the Hammer. And I want them to see what happens when the flames cool, to see what can be made of a mess like me. I want them to see that it's worth it to be discontent and miserable and angry so that one day we can be content and inspired and humbled and more useful than before.

So I'm going to bed to toss and turn once again, dreaming of what's ahead. And I feel better just letting you know what's going on. I haven't lost my mind. I'm just enjoying an extra large portion of discontentment. Mmmm good. Ask for some.