How do I do this?

In my twenty-three years, I have clung to my innocence 'til my knuckles have turned white, and set it in my heart to remain wide-eyed & tender hearted & not to grow jaded in spite of everything the devil has tried to manipulate to harden my heart. That, in and of itself, is proof to me that the Lord is alive & doing new things all the time, because I have had my heart wounded in some pretty cruel & unusual ways (not speaking only of relationships here).  If it weren't for Jesus' love in my life, I would be a very bitter, self-destructive person, content in her brokenness & making reckless decision after reckless decision. As it is, the Lord has been working on my heart year after year, peeling back layers of yuck, healing wounds I'd forgotten were even there, teaching me to make wiser decisions, and just helping me step into the identity I have in Him. He is SUCH a perfect and good Father.  According to Scripture, every member of the body of Christ has a different function & purpose. One of the gifts God buried in my heart is the gift of deep feeling. Obscure as it may sound, I will attempt to unpack that statement.  I feel...SO much. I don't know that I would necessarily call it emotional; it's deeper than that, and quieter - an awareness, if you will. I have experienced joy that I could barely physically contain, and heartbreak that has literally caused my chest to ache. If I had chosen to live my life without the Lord, this part of who I am could turn out to be very, very destructive. But as a follower of the Lord, it is used for His glory, and I love it. That said, I feel deeply about people & situations in my own life, but more importantly, the Lord has used it to help me relate to how others are feeling. There have been several occasions in which I have felt that the Holy Spirit has totally captained my heart, & it immediately breaks for someone or something. It's amazing. All that to say as I was making the hour and a half drive back from church to the Res last Thursday, I was driving in my usual style - music cranked, singing, & lost in thought. Maybe a few miles after I crossed onto the Reservation limits, God just pummeled my heart with a wave of deep compassion & heartbreak for this place - realistically, probably a fraction of how He feels towards these people, but no human could handle or comprehend that, in its fulness. I turned the music down & began to weep & just prayed that God would use me to help fix the brokenness here. To one unfamiliar with something like this, I'd seem like a fool or an overly emotional person, and that is understandable. But for those of you who have experienced the power of the Holy Spirit, you know exactly what I'm talking about. That is what I feel like "God giving you a heart for something" is.  Difficult to define, but in a mysterious way, humbling, because we cannot possibly grasp it. It's too wonderful - too divine.
   So I have been sick in bed these past few days and have had a lot of time to think & to absorb & to process. There is such a heavy spirit of hopelessness & depression here. And everything you hear on the radio, the media, etc. just pounds more nails into that coffin. There is spiritual oppression everywhere, and I am usually pretty sensitive to it.  It just breaks my heart, my friends, that these people - and LOTS of people all over, for that matter, live without hope, without true love - but settle for a sorry excuse for fulfillment, love, & affection because they don't know any better. That last statement may sound derogatory, but again, I included people universally, and can say so because I myself was one of those people. Outside of the knowledge, love, power & FAMILY of Christ, there is no hope - no starting over - no new beginnings - no nothing.
  As I'm sure some of you are familiar by now, God has set it in my heart to form a project out here called Destination Native Nation. It's going to be a ministry to the people here - specifically kids/teens - AND a ministry to the bands that come through. I am booking Christian musicians and speakers all throughout the summer & fall to come and to share what God has done in their lives through their music, to awaken a hunger for the Lord, and to bust the fricken cap off of depression, brokenness, and all that nast with some LOUD music. And it's going to be incredible.
   I started this entry by asking the question that's been on my mind for the past however long: "How do I do this?" And the answer is I don't know. I STILL don't know. But it's working. It's coming together. And it is NOT me - it is seriously 100% God. And I am SO excited that He wanted to use me to help it come together. But it's also working on the bands, and ministering to them - working on ME & breaking down all my ideas of how life should work & my preconceived notions & getting basically schooled by the kids that I'm so passionate about ministering to. Because that's life, and that's community. We are here to serve one another, to walk alongside one another, to be a part of a beautiful Kingdom under Father God, and to bear each other's burdens.
   Having lived in Nashville for awhile, I will admit, I have let my jadedness get the best of me as far as the "Christian music scene" goes. But as with any people group, corruption WILL inevitably leak into the equation, merely because the group composed of people. We are the sickness & Christ IS the healer, & he turns all of our awful "I am"s to victorious "I was"s.  Everybody has struggles, and weaknesses, and annoying idiosyncrasies, and hang ups & insecurities. For awhile, I didn't want to have anything to do with anyone who had anything to do with the music industry because I was SO sick of all of the, to be frank, BS that comes along with it. But that's jaded. And you know what, it isn't fair or realistic. It's making something bigger than it is, and pretending that exact thing doesn't happen in all other contexts of life, and choosing to allow several instances and observations to negatively alter an entire view of a broad subject.  By being jaded, I CHOSE to allow myself to be robbed of the joy of one of my most favorite passions - music. I remember driving on a day in a very low time in my life. I didn't know what else to do, so I did what my Mama always used to do; I turned on Christian radio, which I was usually partial to thinking I was "cooler than" because I viewed it as hokey. A simple song came on - one I'd heard a thousand times. But even in spite of the predictable key changes, the bright sunny major chords & hip harmonies.......the TRUTH of who God is & how He felt about me was communicated to me right there in that moment.  It was a very humbling moment for me. I've had lots of moments like that one since then, and not just with music. I've had them regarding how I relate to other people, how I view myself, etc, and I think that is just the Holy Spirit taking my pride and saying "HEY. This isn't Melissa.com. Get the frick over yourself." And you know what? I think I did....or at least am in the process of it. Because I don't care that I don't have a remarkably interesting job to wow you with, or a nice degree from a prestigious school to hang on my wall; I don't care that I'm not "cool" or really anything out of the ordinary. I just care about using what I know & what I'm gifted with to communicate the best thing that has ever happened to mankind (myself included) to everyone I meet, starting with the community God has placed me in today.

How do I do this?
No.
How do I NOT do this?