I'm sitting at my desk, drinking a dangerously good cup of coffee (by dangerous I mean so good I could be addicted) and thinking of the whirlwind that has been the last few weeks/months at ENCM. Every corner I turn at the co-op leads me to another adventure in either relationships or responsibility, making my life at the very least exciting, and most often deeply rewarding. I've said it about a million times, but I'm always amazed at how revealing the simplest moments are. How a trade of smiles or a handshake can make you feel like you just crossed a border of what is allowed or expected into the territory of dangerous, scary, exciting and amazing shared life.

Several months ago I had a crazy idea pop into my head. What if we planned a huge benefit concert? What if we threw a big artistic party with performers and musicians and artists and food and ferris wheels and clowns and okay, maybe not the clowns, but what if we told one amazing story in an event and people came and they were moved and donated a million dollars? Wouldn't that be AMAZING! These are the times that my ideas become brightly colored helium balloons soaring in sky to heights unmanageable and inside the balloon is a super hero that saves the world.

The problem with sharing my enormous ideas with Ryan, director of a non-profit, is that those ideas inspire him and excite him and then he says YES, go do it! Usually, I throw my ideas out so that someone else will be inspired to take them and run with it. I'm always content to own the idea, but a lot more leery of trying to make it happen. I get away with that by calling myself the idea person and surrounding myself with the movers and shakers that make the ideas happen. Unfortunately, Ryan is so overworked that he shines the mirror of my ideas right back at me and then does something terrible.... expects me to make them happen.

So, with the feeling that maybe I should have kept my idea to myself, I started doing what all people with great ideas do at first... organize meetings with smart people. This allows you to share your idea and get feedback that may inform your next step. And for me, this big idea was going to have to be a step by step sort of thing. I transformed my big picture superhero idea into something slightly more manageable. And then I really did surround myself with smart people like Jeremy Lee and Jonathan Moore to help me get one step further, then one more step further. Than I did the unthinkable, I asked my best friend to be the main performer the night of the event... deplorable, I know. I'm realizing that the longer you work at a non-profit, the more comfortable you become calling in favors and asking for help.

So, fast forward to a few months later (longer than a few months because I procrastinate when I don't know what to do) and here we are, a week away from an event that somehow, with the help of my friends, is planned and happening and I'm about as nervous about it as one person can get. Standing By: A Benefit For East Nashville Cooperative Ministry will be at Nashville's historic Belcourt Theatre on October 28th at 8pm. The event is being sponsored by all kinds of local organizations and we have 3 local acts playing and even a local taco truck serving tacos for dinner before hand. And I've even had a bunch of people say that they are coming. I have no idea what to expect. I just hope that we get a lot of people in one room so we can accurately tell the story of the crazy things that God does with a bunch of slightly incapable but willing people.

The lessons are still piling up faster than I can share them. This time I learn that if your courageous enough to follow through with a crazy idea, and ask for help in the process, one step turns into ten steps then fifty and somehow things get done and then you feel courageous and like God somehow did an amazing thing with your small hands and your tiny brain. He turned a few fish and a loaf of bread into a benefit concert. How does he do that? I don't know, but being caught in the middle of those kinds of miracles is like stepping out of your house on the first cold day of fall without a jacket on. You're taken by surprise by the way the cold feels on your skin, the way you can see your breathe, somehow acknowledging that you are in fact breathing in and out, that you are in fact alive, awake.