Creature of habit? Or just glutton for punishment?

No, you know I don't consider my Sunday-morning gig to be even remotely close to punishment. It's the nearest to heaven I've experienced in my nearly 39 years of life.

But this coming weekend, SoulFire has accepted an invitation to lead worship at a youth retreat for a Des Moines church (Westchester E-Free). We'll be leading a worship time on Friday night, Saturday morning, Saturday night and Sunday morning.

Which takes me away from my usual Sunday morning thing at FCC.

And as much as I totally TOTALLY love playing with SoulFire, I also TOTALLY love playing on Sunday mornings. I know that that may seem strange to some, but the two activities fulfill completely different niches in me. Playing with SoulFire is like being on a well-honed college volleyball squad; we all know each other inside-out, know what's coming, etc... very satisfying teamwork. Playing on Sunday morning is more like playing a pick-up volleyball game at a church social. The music may be somewhat less tightly refined, simply due to the inability to practice enough and due to the rotation of individual instrumentalists from week to week. But the fellowship with so many precious people more than makes up for it. Plus, I've always been a rather spur-of-the-moment person anyway, which sets me up to be a helpful worship accompanist who's always ready and able to switch gears whenever the leader needs that to happen.

I relish both roles, and normally the two don't interfere with one another. This weekend, however, is different, and I feel bad about it, like I'm backing out on a promise or something. Jeff has assured me that it's fine, and I had actually intended on taking one weekend this month to be gone, but I can't help feeling like I'm going to be missing out on something awesome by missing church. Is it a habit? Maybe. But it's a happy habit and one that I'd choose again if offered the opportunity.

The next time I miss church will be for the Fort Worth, Texas wedding of FrankJ and SarahK on the second weekend in December.

I'm also hoping to have carpal-tunnel surgery in January, which may knock me out of playing for a week or so. My orthopedic doc insists that he actually prescribes piano-playing for his recovering CT-release patients who are pianists, because it's very good therapy. Perhaps I could play only on the Ensoniq synthesizer, since it's not got weighted keys.

Anyway, I'm wavering between feeling guilty because I've made myself such an integral part of the Sunday-morning team, and feeling ashamed of myself for thinking anyone will even miss it that much, since they went plenty of months with no piano and did just fine thank you.

I should probably just quit thinking about it.