Busy, busy busy!

Well! What a hectic few weeks this has been and what a triumphant culmination we had on Saturday night at IGNITION! My goodness!
First of all I wanted to share some thoughts on being busy then I will talk more about the Ignition concert event.
Why does it seem that when we get busy, and maybe it's just me who feels this way, we tend to rush around, so busy, with so many things to do that we forget to take our own moments later on in the day to relax, settle down and enjoy even five minutes? When I get busy, and by busy I mean every few minutes something else is added to my seemingly never ending list of jobs or tasks to do, my body and mind work in over driven and even when I get home, with nothing planned or a few moments to myself, I am still feeling like I'm missing something from my daily busyness. I feel like there are things I should be doing, things I should have finished or that I should be thinking about. In truth, I don't need to be thinking about anything in those quiet moments but because of my busy day, my mind keeps the pace set to frantic and won't let me rest properly. Even my sleep is affected by me staying up later than usual and not getting enough rest overnight. Which, in turn, creates a nasty, dragging loop as it affects my next day and the busyness and tireness keep pulling me down. Until, that is, the major catalyst for the busyness erupts and in an outpouring of events finishes the majority of its enveloping of my daily life.
In this case, the days leading up to Ignition, along with my everyday duties as well as any new Fall requirements, kept me in this frantic pace. I expected the busy feeling to wear down but so far I seem to be gliding on a "busy high" as new jobs emerge and thrust themselves into my path. As to when will I be able to calm down, to settle, to really rest....well I've been trying to without any real success thus far.
So, more about Ignition: Several weeks ago I told Andy that if the Billy Graham guys needed a bit of help with anything to do with Media/Video that they can always ask me. The result of that (foolish) offer was having me be in charge of putting all the band's lyrics up on the two screens over the live video. Now I know not to volunteer unless I am very specific and know what I am getting into. The task was a little daunting since I did not know any of the bands and I did not want to mess up with 4500 people watching. On the bright side, I was not sitting in a visible place in the arena so if I did mess up, no one would see me. I was instead in a tiny Referee's locker room behind the stage and uder the stairs with two guys who ran both the video cameras and Dvds. Fun.
After weeks of answering phone calls about Ignition, and assisting in selling tickets from the office, I was getting excited to be a part of that big night. During the week before I complied all the lyrics I needed, spell-checked, formatted and got them ready in the band's set list order. On the Saturday, I was asked to met the Video guys at 9 am to set up and test everything. I arrived early at the arena (after not much sleep due to the crazy-busy-bug flying around my mind) where some nice worker let me in. I walked around, asked a few audio/visual workers if they knew so-and-so I was supposed to meet...they did not know....walked around....sat....watched the lighting gurus test the show lights...phoned a few people to find out where they Video guys were...walked around...checked everywhere I could think of...sat some more....I maybe even said a few nasty things under my breath...then FINALLY the guy I who told me to meet at 9 am showed up a bit after 11 am!! Nice. Since he didn't seem concerned that I was waiting for TWO HOURS I didn't say anything (my "wasp" upbringing shining through), and we quickly set up and tested my laptop and the lyrics. We fixed a few tiny problems, got everything working in about an hour....then he said oh ok, I guess you could go now, we won't need you until later at about 5 pm. Great. Nice. Fan-bleeding-tastic.
So after checking out the beginnings of the Free Pre-Event, I grabbed some lunch at my lovely parent's house next door, traveled home, took my dog for a walk, had a shower and a nice nap. Ah. For the moment I felt rested. Angry and still tired, but rested...if that makes any sense.
Before 4:30 pm hit I was back at the arena, my Backstage, All Access pass around my neck and ready to put on a show. I was a little disappointed that we were stuck in a tiny room watching a 5 inch monitor of only the stage. And I was still nervous about mucking up the words if I couldn't properly hear the bands, but when the bands began, I went into "show" mode and everything went smoothly. The guys I was working with were nice and talented at what they did. They made the experience interesting as I got to see how to direct two cameras for a show using broadcast-quality video equipment.
When Will Graham began to speak I took a walk out into the concourse and was a little dismayed at the groups a teens wandering around when the most important part of the night was going on. However, later I thought about it and there was actually only about 30-40 kids out of 4500 that couldn't sit still enough for the speaking part. Apparently about 265 decisions were made and swarms of kids and teens went forward in response to the message. It was so awesome to hear reports of some of out younger teens leading teens to the Lord and even our youth leaders leading co-workers and other adults to Christ. How encouraging and amazing!
After the evening I almost went out but realized how exhausted I was and I had to be up at the church at 8:30 am for al three services of the day. I went home and tried to go right to bed but the "up" feeling of my busy week kept me awake for a while longer.
Sunday was busy as normal, three services, songs, slides, changes et cetera. Then Monday, which is normally my day off, was filled with a morning at the office of teaching someone how to use a program on a laptop and making unexpected slides for them from 9 am until 1:30 pm. Not really impressed at being there on my day off but it meant I could take a few hours off sometime soon. Yay. I thought I would spend the rest of my day doing something, whether it was walk my dog, go work out or something.....but fairly soon after sitting in my dad's big comfortable leather recliner for a few moments of glorious cable Tv...I fell asleep! The busyness and fast pace of my entire weekend finally caught up to me and I had nothing to do but slow down and take a break. Twas a lovely nap and I spent the rest of my Monday catching up on a few missed shows. The new show "Heroes" is excellent and I look forward to seeing how the characters develop.
Anyway, Tuesday has (obviously) been a bit less busy since I am writing this at the end of my work day. I'm hoping some of the frantic pace will dissipate as we settle into the Fall. Maybe now I can get more of the much-needed rest I want and need. Maybe now my mind will stop racing and settle into a slower throb for a few weeks at least.