Confessions of an Empty Playlist...

It should be no secret, I am a hopeless hopeless romantic. Love is always on my mind, most of the time questioning if I'll ever find it. But what I have found is that when my mind is focused on God, I don't worry about finding love. And I was also forced to ask, what if God was on my mind as much as love is? But more importantly, just how much of my life does my idol consume? Well, being the little science geek that I am I decided to conduct an experiment. So I created a playlist, entitled it "experiment", and got to work.

I started with my itunes library being the music lover that I am. The lyrics just speak to me. I have 2031 songs excluding musical/movie soundtracks. That's 10.39GB and enough to last me for 5.2 days. No, I did not calculate that. It tells you at the bottom of the screen. I do have a life. Anyway, I separated any song that made me think about love (whether finding it, loosing it, or just not having it) from just your average ones. Here's what I found:

First, love is so much on my mind that some songs like Adele's "Chasing Pavements" can sometimes make me think of it, but when you really look at what the song is about has nothing to do with it. These I also grouped with the love songs.

Second, I then took out all the songs about death. And there were quite a few. I realized that during those dark days death had been on my mind a lot as well. Music just seemed to help me deal with loosing everyone I had. That lost 106 songs.

Third, After I went through and deleted all the songs that made me think of love I only had 541 left. That's shocking. This 541 included anything from country to hip/hop dance party music to hard rock. And Trace Adkins to Usher and BEP to Jack Johnson to Breaking Benjamin and Yellowcard. Oh and some Beach boys in there too ha ha. Oh and let's not forget Glee. Wow, even some Lady Gaga, LMFAO, and Korn. I didn't know I was a Korn fan :/. And yes, I am a Nickelback and Pussycat Dolls fan. And of course my main man, Neil Diamond (say what you will, but he inspired my love of music) Now, when you do the math after calculating what I had left after I removed the songs about death it works out to about 77%.

Wow 77% of my music is love songs. That's shocking! But I think there lies my problem. Still I was not satisfied. I deleted every non christian song and found I had only 255 left. That's only 12.5%! I couldn't even find my christian songs until I had deleted every thing else.
And sometimes that's how God finally gets through to us. He has to peel away everything else that takes our attention away. And it hurts. But He MUST strip away the bad. But we are called to love God not only with our hearts and soul, but with our minds as well (Matthew 22:37). Our thoughts should be just as honoring as our words. And both should reflect a pure heart.

I love music. And sometimes I know that's how God speaks to me. So it only seemed fitting as I was sitting there thinking about my idol of falling in love and how it occupies my thoughts to an unhealthy degree that "By Your Side" by 10th Avenue North came on. And wow, way to convict God!

"Why are you looking for love? Why are you still searching as if I'm not enough?"