You Should've Seen My Face

Something happened to me this past Sunday that has never happened ever. I have actually had nightmares about it happening but Sunday all my nightmares became reality.

I lead worship for a living. Churches call, I pick up the phone, they ask me to come play, and I say yes. It's a pretty simple process. They tell me what they want, when it starts, what I'll need to bring, etc, and for 10 years I have always gotten all of it right.....until Sunday. The pastor is a good friend of mine and he asked me to play at his church for a missions recap (I went on a mission trip with them last month and it was awesome). I was at the beach when he called to give me the details but I remember exactly what he said:

"We're going to eat a Low Country Boil then have the service. We're getting started at 6:30". The pastor and I are both ADD and a little slow....but our minds race a million miles a minute. So we talk a little more and hang up but we aren't on the same page at all.

I walk in the church at about 6:40 and the church is full of people and Johnny is up front praying. You should have seen my face. I haven't set up, done a sound check, picked out the songs, gotten PowerPoint ready...nothing. I was wishing I had worn my adult diaper.

What in the world am I going to do?? So I just decided to walk down the center isle. Johnny says "well look who decided to show up" and everyone stands up, laughing and clapping, and welcomes me in. They are patting us on the back (my friend Stu was there too to play the djembe) and laughing at us.....I was sooooooooooooo embarrassed. It takes a lot for me to get embarrassed - like showing up in the middle of a church service where I was supposed to be leading worship and have the entire congregation laugh at you. There's nothing you can do at that point.

But Johnny is smooth, they had a meet and greet time so I got everything set up. He laughed and took full responsibility for it (it was both our faults for not paying attention) and everything was fine. It wasn't near as bad as it could have been.

I seriously do have terrible dreams where I forget to show up to church or the song I am doing just totally bombs or I show up to church late and everyone stares at me as I quietly and awkwardly get everything set up on stage. Whew, I get an awful feeling just writing about it. But, like I said, it wasn't bad. Everyone laughed, I led them in worship, and it was very good. THEN we had the Low Country Boil and it was delicious.

So the moral of the story - don't fake the funk on a nasty dunk.