big britches

I was reminded this evening of a phrase I heard once that I liked and wanted to hold on to, knowing that it would be appropriate to consider from time to time. It goes like this:

"Being a leader is like being a lady; if you have to tell someone you are, you probably aren't."

Last night, at the first of the two identical events in which I participated this weekend, I got a little too close to the "tell people I'm a leader" than I should have. In the past I have been in a leadership role at this event, but I haven't seemed to figure out how to reprogram myself when at the same event but not officially in charge of anything. I saw things that needed to happen, and barged ahead. Now, the stuff needed to be done, for sure. But it probably didn't have to be done by me. So tonight I sat on my hands. I had been asked to do a few things, so I did them, but otherwise I tried to stay out if it. This is hard for me.

The other thing that happened for me tonight was that the venue in which the aforementioned event took place, and in some ways the event itself, lost some of its "big time" luster and sparkle in my mind. I used to think that the whole thing was pretty big stuff, but tonight I realized that it's really not. Okay, so it was a performance of the Messiah. But as some of the spectacle began to fade in the face of missed orchestra cues, a warbly soloist, and choir members that sometimes spaced out in the middle of a song (oops!), and as I got a little sad about that, something else happened that I grew to be okay with. The texts jumped out. Espeically the truth of it all. We were singing (preaching really) about something cosmically true and important. And boy does it not matter all that much if something goes a little wrong. Who cares if a critic is right about some of what didn't go well? Why does it matter if the soloists don't get called back onto the stage by thunderous applause? There was ultimate truth about the Savior of the world that we were proclaiming. That's what matters. And I hope more people in the room than just me caught that.