the story I find myself in

today I am going to sing at a gathering of some of my favorite people here in Winnipeg...My Aunt Nettie and Uncle Peter are having their 40th wedding anniversary and i am singing...I am freaking out I am freaking out...that more what i feel like saying but at this point the calm before the performance has set in. This whole week I have been wondering how I would do...this whole week has been obsessed with something I haven't even done yet...and now that the inevitable has arrived an eerie quiet settles over my busy thoughts. A miracle didn't happen, my sisters didn't get to Winnipeg to help me out, or simply take over...my grandpa didn't forgot and got back to me with a hymn he recommended (a family effort with my auntie Carol and Kath involved too)...I even practised (which I don't normally do since I somehow still believe that practising somehow makes singing more of a performance art and less an act of love) somehow from growing up experiences and my own awkward interpretation of everything; singing in public has always been this way...a form of appreciation that I know falls short of perfection every time but sing I must...over and over again...back in my heyday (I didn't actually really have one) when I was in choirs and singing more regularly I found it easier simply because I was numb to it after doing it so much...however usually before a performance I remember back when I was 11 I was so nervous I was praying that God would break my legs so I wouldn't have to sing at the Christmas pageant at the Hazlett's...I prayed the week before, the day before, the day of...but somehow I ended up standing beside Nathan, James and Ste and singing "Go tell it on the mountain" while one of the little kids found a tambourine to bang and completely mess up the rhythm, to make it even worse James who normally carried the boys section decided he wouldn't sing, so it was me...and the background vocals singing off key, out of rhythm in front of this boy I had a huge crush on and whose school I would be going to the next year...I wanted to disappear into the floor. Somehow I survived it and moved on to sing again in public...every now and then when I get really unnecessarily worried over something I remember that experience and remind myself that I should be worried...really worried...growing older has helped a bit, I started to help God out in giving him plans of how to break my legs or intervene in the situation to make it 'go away' instead of just asking for him to miraculously break my legs...cause that's a bit unrealistic...one time i backed out last minute and made my sis sing alone....accapella...I am a horrible person...but she made me cry she sang so well....anyway...that was my week...now I feel like a rusty old kettle getting ready to sing He leadeth me...He leadeth me right here...Oh blessed thought...Oh words with heavenly comfort fraught...I kept telling him its' the earthly comfort i need but by His hand, He takes me and grabs it, He won't let go, He drags me and I am forced to follow...He leadeth me...