In His Own Words - March 2001

It has been nearly a month since my new record, Chasing the Horizon, was released. It has been a lot of work trying to get it out there, and it has taken up much of my time, my attention, and my energy. However, now I am ready to enter back into the land of the living.

I am in the midst of doing quite a few concerts and I am very fortunate to do so. Traveling around and doing concerts is what I really love to do. I am presently sitting in the worst traffic jam I have ever experienced. We have been sitting on the interstate that runs through Chicago for the last three hours. It is miserable, but I love this. Everything about it is appealing to me. Well, not everything, but the pros outweigh the cons so greatly that the negatives seem to go unnoticed.

People often ask me why I do this. Why I drive across the country, through the night. Why I keep "abusing" myself. my answer? ... This wears me out, but it energizes me like nothing else. It is quite a rush. This "abusing" myself is a blessing and I don't know what else I ever would do or could do. I can't imagine doing anything else.

I'm not sure what a calling is, but I know this is the closest thing I've ever come to having one. Frederick Buechner says a calling is when your greatest passion and the world's greatest need meet. I don't think anyone has a great need for what I am doing, but it is humbling when God works through something I have come up with. I don't know if that is happening or not, but it is my prayer that I could make myself available for that scenario to take place.

It is still quite a blessing to travel and get to do concerts with Brad Layher and Cobra Joe Curet. I absolutely love it. They are great musicians and we are great friends. I am also very fortunate to get to play with Mark Robertson from time to time. Mark has produced everything I have ever recorded. When it works out, he comes along to concerts and plays upright bass. What a wonderful experience to have a stage full of good friends that all have a mutual respect for one another. I'm so thankful ... I couldn't do this without them.

Like I said, things have been really busy recently. In the past few months, I have learned how precious silence is. So, it's always my prayer that I haven't cluttered my life with that which is unnecessary.

But if silence is so golden and so precious, I'm not sure why I am so scared of it. I know that the Word always comes out of silence, yet I fill the silence with clutter. Back in Genesis, God brought forth the Word out of silence. Also, there was 400 years of silence between the Old and the New Testaments before Jesus, the living, breathing Word, came on the scene. Why would I not think that God would communicate with me in the silence of my life?

Basically, I am telling myself, and God is very gracious in reminding me, that I am not the sum of what I do and what I accomplish. I will never be able to achieve more than I already am. God has made me what I am, and it is foolish for me to think that I could ever become "more" of a child of God. I wish I could learn some contentment instead of being consumed by the incessant restlessness that keeps spinning around in my soul.

I long to trust and rest in the fact that God will take care of me in the same way God takes care of the birds of the air and the flowers of the field. As I am typing this now, I look out the window to see a robin hopping across the grass in front of a few violets. It is so small, so dumb. But here is the catch ... it has no worries and no concerns. It is free to be itself, completely. Without getting in the way of itself. The violets are so frail. They are at the mercy of the elements that move and effect them.

I am the same ... small, dumb, frail. It would do me some good to remember that and to realize that true liberty comes in grasping just how insignificant we are and how we are at the mercy of the Power that moves us. Oh, to experience that kind of freedom.

And God is concerned enough with us to move us. God is gracious enough to get us out of the way of ourselves. And merciful enough to stop the "spinning" and give us rest.

And powerful enough to get these cars out of our way.

Peace of Christ,
Mitch