What do you do when caring 'gets in the way'?

Yesterday in the church meeting (I won't call it a service - maybe I'll post about those later) I became aware of a number of people.

Some guests of very good friends of ours, now living in Birmingham. I could see there was just so much hurt in their eyes: it almost took my breath away when I was introduced. Unfortunately that was during a pause in the middle, and they left shortly after things finished.

My mother, struggling with her hearing, the changes in the way she feels inside that have resulted from her illness and things in an uncomfortable format. She frequently wore an expression I know I have sometimes when I'm somewhere that's off-beam and into 'making stuff up' territory.

Guests of other people that I didn't get to meet. Again, I could see tragedy and sadness written across their faces. There were tears, people praying for them, but I just kept being aware they were hurting.

This is nothing new to me, but it isn't always so obvious and the reverberations don't usually keep echoing the following morning.

In the middle of this I was down the front, working the PA, sorting the CD player, playing guitar, just doing stuff. I'm starting to wonder if I may need to back away from playing in the meetings, at least partially, in the future. Still playing every week, and sometimes it's stopping me doing other things. But there's no-one else that can step in, and we're actually pretty short of musicians and worship leaders right now. And my playing has become like a Ford hot hatch - mediocrity +10%.

I dunno. Maybe navel gazing on a blog isn't good.