A Heavy Load to Carry

To celebrate Holy Week, I am going to try to post a video a day, similar to the one below.  I hope it helps you dwell on what was accomplished for us on that Sunday so many years ago.  


Just last week, Nick and I went to Arizona.  He was on business and I... well... I mostly just sat by the pool.  :)  What was cool though is that I also got to spend a lot of time working on songs for the Scripture to Music Project - one for Hebrews and one that I'm currently calling "Gethsemane", taken from Mark 15:26-52.

For "Gethsemane", I tried to both describe what is happening and also capture the feeling and emotion and angst of what is happening.  It might sound a little presumptuous, but put yourself in Jesus's shoes on the night before he went to the cross, just for a minute.  Late on Thursday night, and into the early morning on Good Friday.... He knows He is about to be betrayed by Judas, and He knows the painful death that approaches.  It's dark and growing darker, and the weight of what lies ahead lays heavy upon Him.

The song ends on Friday, and it doesn't allude to Sunday at all.  I think we often skip ahead to the end of the story - to the resurrection - without dwelling on the darkness and sadness of that Thursday and Friday.  The cross Jesus carried was much more than just a physical object - it was all of our mess and sin and grief, and it was a heavy load to carry indeed.    




I climbed a mountain with three friends

Feel the darkness pressing in
I ask them to please stay awake
And I go off alone to pray

Father, please
Would you take this cup
It’s a heavy load to carry
But not my will
But what you want
Until I’m dead and buried

Sweat and blood they fall like tears
It seems the last star’s disappeared
Death it comes to separate
And my friends can’t stay awake

Father, please
Would you take this cup
It’s a heavy load to carry
But not my will
But what you want
Until I’m dead and buried

They came with clubs to capture me
An old friend he kissed my cheek
And all my friends they ran away
And I’m alone, denied, betrayed

Father, please
Would you take this cup
It’s a heavy load to carry
But not my will
But what you want
Until I’m dead and buried

My God, my God’s forsaken me
Hanging broken on a tree
Who can save you now they laugh
The darkness comes, I breath my last

What Does It Matter Anyway?

Don't see the player?  Click refresh or click here and listen to it on Bandcamp.  PS - Download it for free!

I wrote this song the other week from the book of Ecclesiastes.  It's called "All is Vanity" and that's pretty much the subject of the whole song (and the whole book of Ecclesiastes!).

Which got me to thinking...

Throughout time and history, billions of songs have been written and sung.  99.999% of them die away quickly and many are never even heard by a wider audience than.... like... the person's mom.

Plus, there are so many great songs out there already.  Songs that move you, songs that make you dance, songs that make you laugh. It's like we have all the songs we'll ever need covering every topic you could dream up.  As Solomon says in Ecclesiastes, there is nothing new under the sun.

So, why write another song?  Who really needs another song when we have bazillions to choose from already?  Who needs another everyday songwriter, yet another voice?  Is it all, to quote Solomon again, just "striving after wind?"  Is it all "vanity of vanities" and meaningless?

I've been asking myself these questions lately and, to be honest, have been pretty discouraged.  In the last week or so, I've felt my creative energy drain away - maybe it's all the work we're doing on the house, maybe it's writer's block, or maybe it's just these questions getting to me?

Maybe it's a combination of those things, but here's the TRUTH that I'm trying to preach to myself:

As a Christian, I don't work and toil so that I can write the next great, lasting song.  I don't write to gain fame or so that people will know my name.  So why do I write?  And why do I sing?

It is not gain significance under the sun.  

For I have already gained great significance in Him.
Even more, He infuses everything under the sun with significance.

And so I write.
And so I sing.

To chase my own glory would be like chasing the wind.

I would come up empty every time.

But in His love, He has chased me.

And so I write.
And so I sing.

Why do you write, sing, blog, paint, mother, cook, work, design, study?  What does it matter anyway?

God's Hidden Hand

We recently studied the book Esther in my Tuesday morning Bible study, and I was so encouraged by its theme:

God's plans may be hidden, but his hidden hand is always working for His glory and for the good of those who love Him.


I sometimes wonder... why did this or that happen in my life?  God, why have you moved us from Austin to Dallas to China to Boston and now to Tyler, TX?  Why have we moved every 2-3 years?  Why did my businessman husband go to seminary?  How in the world did we end up in Tyler, where we never thought we'd be?

Could it be that one of the many reasons we have moved to so many places so that it has provided me with a larger audience of people to (hopefully) encourage with music?  Maybe...

Could it be that one of the reasons we went to seminary in Massachusetts was because, there, all fertility treatment is free for those who have insurance?  Did God, in His sovereignty, so sweetly work that out for us, all behind the scenes?  I will never forget that feeling when I realized God's tender and providential care for us in this.

Could it be that Nick went to seminary at Gordon-Conwell not to become a pastor but to serve in other ways?  What those ways are, we don't fully know quite yet... but we are seeing glimpses.

Could it be that, in Tyler, we are exactly where God's hidden hand has guided us to be for now?  To serve our church?  To love high school kids?  To make new friends that will deeply affect us and live life with us?

God is telling a Story and, crazily, He is using our small stories to tell it.  We can take great comfort in knowing that the Story maker's hidden hand is working, even if we can't see what it is doing, and it is working and moving for our good and His glory.

This song from Esther reminds us of this truth... I hope you like it!


Can't see the player?  Click refresh or go here to listen, even on your mobile phone.

An Extraordinary Life?

Update: Watch a video of the song called "Extraordinary Life" in the post "An Extraordinary Life, Part 2".

My life looks very ordinary. I'm a wife and a stay-at-home mom living in a town in Texas a lot of people have never heard of.  I give my daughter a bottle 4x a day, cook dinner, hang with friends, clean my house, lead Young Life.  Before Ellie, I worked and did the normal 8 to 5 thing.  See? I'm totally ordinary.

And then there's this songwriting thing.  I often view it as my ticket out of "ordinary" and into "extraordinary."  I mean, what if I could write a song that some famous rock star recorded? Yes...that would make me extraordinary.  I would be doing something extraordinary for God, right? All this time spent writing and singing would be for something. It would be my day job, and I would start to love answering the common question "what do you do?" and I would start to love being introduced as a "professional songwriter."  I would be extraordinary.

Wow. Don't I sound like a terrible person? Lately, I've felt convicted about this lie... the lie that we must do something extraordinary for God, the lie that ordinary is not enough.

The truth is, we should not focus so much on being extraordinary, but on being extraordinarily faithful to God in the ordinary moments on the most ordinary of days.

There is more to this story, and I'll post more about it in the coming days.  But, until then I want to leave you with the lyrics of a new song I wrote a few weeks ago as I was thinking about these things.  I hope it encourages you.    

So, what's your story? What's your ticket out of the ordinary and into the extraordinary? Are you ok with being ordinary in the eyes of the world, knowing that you are extraordinarily made by an extraordinary God?  Are you extraordinarily faithful in the ordinary moments? 

The Meaning Behind the Songs: "Abel"

 Listen to "Abel" or read the lyrics.

Almost 2 years ago now, Gordon-Conwell Seminary near Boston held a Genocide Awareness Week.  My friend Stephanie was in charge, and told me that I should consider writing a song about genocide to perform during one of the sessions.  

Write a song about genocide?  Hmmmm.... Simple enough, right?  Ummm, no.  It's much easier to write a song about love or babies or weddings or being lonely... but genocide?  Very intimidating.

But I did.  And it just flowed out as I thought about the first murder - Cain's murder of his brother Abel in Genesis 4.  This song is told from the perspective of the dirt (hence the first line: "your blood is in my mouth"), which is kind of a strange perspective to take, but it works.  After that first murder, Abel's blood cried out to God from the dirt.  God heard that cry.  What Cain did was wrong and twisted and defied the intentions of God the Creator and the beauty and order of his creation. 

Now think about this... how much blood has been spilled and soaked up by the dirt since then?  Genocide is Cain and Abel's murder manifested on a much larger scale, but the same twisted and sinister evil is at its root.  

Many people who speak about social justice stop here and say "the people behind genocide and murder are evil and bad and the oppressed victims of these heinous crimes are innocent."  While this statement is true on a human level, I think that God has a bolder and bigger plan.  He hates genocide and murder, yes.  There is great hope for the oppressed, for the victim, for the widow, for the orphan, for the poor and downtrodden, for Abel.  But God also has the ability to redeem even the Cains of this world and the to rescue us from the twistedness inside of us... the twistedness that make even the best of us capable of what he did.  The latter half of this song speaks to this, and it's definitely the heart of the song.

Any thoughts?  Do you agree?  I'm still working this out in my mind and my heart, so I welcome any comments!

The Meaning Behind the Songs: "Dirt" (#7)

Listen to "Dirt" or read the lyrics.

This song started from a simple quote from Martin Luther's commentary on Galatians (I have a husband in seminary, what can I say?), and grew from there. It's an amazingly fun song to sing live, but my hope is that the lyrics is what people eventually hear and hone in on.   

"As the earth itself does not produce rain and is unable to acquire it by its own strength... so this heavenly righteousness is given to us by God without our work or merit.  As much as the dry earth of itself is able to accomplish in obtaining the right and blessed rain, that much can we men accomplish by our own strengths and works to obtain that divine, heavenly, and eternal righteousness..." 

-Martin Luther

 

The Meaning Behind the Songs: "Garden" (#6)

Listen to "Garden" or see the lyrics.

The melody and guitar picking came first for this song.  For a long time, I had also wanted to write lyrics about the creation story... the feel and the melody of this song seemed to lend themselves well to the creation theme, and slowly but surely a song started to form.

The creation story is one that I read and hear about over and over again, and suddenly I am numb to the beauty of what God did... that He created out of absolute nothingness a world full of life, beauty, companionship, love, sound, and color.  He created our sense of taste and touch and sight and smell.  He gave us food and light and dark and purpose and, most importantly, he gave us free access to himself.  He also gave Adam his wife, Eve.  I'm sure she was beautiful to behold for him, but she was also like his shield, his partner, and his home.

The bridge of this song shows how quickly the created order spiraled into disorder after what we call "the Fall."  Our relationship with God becomes especially distorted and we turn our backs on the one who formed and shaped the world around us, and who formed and shaped us.       

I hope you can hear the "but" at the beginning of the last chorus, because after the downward spiral of the bridge and the sense of distortion and disorder that wells up slowly through, it really is so important...

Hope you enjoy it! 

The Meaning Behind the Songs: "Let Me Be" (#5)

Listen to "Let Me Be" or see the lyrics.

Like "Dark" and "Free," this song came out of my time in Dallas.  I think I would be totally repetitive to tell you the story behind this song, since I've kind of already done that twice...  :)


But let me share at least this... this is one of my favorite songs to sing live (along with maybe "Next Year" - #13)!  It's comfortable and familiar and, even more important, I really get to feel it every time I sing it.  I get to feel that angst and darkness that I felt during that hard time in my life.  The song is kind of gritty and raw and dramatic, and I like that too.

Hope you guys are liking these posts!  It's good for me to think through where these songs came from, because they live and breathe on their own now and I sometimes forget the meaning and the context behind them...

The Meaning Behind the Songs: "Dark" (#4)

Listen to "Dark" or see the lyrics.

I wrote this song just last year, but it looks back on our time in Dallas... my first year out of college, my first year working (and working really long hours), and my first year married.  It was - you guessed it - kind of a dark time for me.  

I actually have already written a bit about it already in this post on the song "Free".  The first line of the second verse - "I'm losing myself, that's how I feel" - really sums up that time.  I couldn't figure out who I was, because all of the things that I had put my identity in were definitely crumbling away.

And what was I left with?  Pretty much just a desperation for God to step in and rescue me from all these lies I was believing about my situation, even though I would probably fight Him when He did.

And that's what the prayer is all about at the end of the song... 

The Meaning Behind the Songs: "Spring" (#3)

Listen to "Spring" or see the lyrics.

"Spring" started out as a joke song inspired by the long winters in New England that like to hang on - with white-knuckled ferocity - until April or sometimes even May. But a deeper meaning crept into the song as I wrote.


When April or May comes around, the desire for spring and sun and being outside grows in intensity for people who live in New England. I mean, we've been cooped up in our homes since December, it's been dark starting at 4:30 pm every night since November, and our friends from Texas are posting pics from the lake on their Facebook pages (or, is that just me?). Arrgh.



Ok, it's really not that bad - but I truly have this intense desire to be outside, to be warm, to wear shorts again when these "spring" months come around. When it finally does, I really enjoy and appreciate the sun and wearing shorts more than I ever did in Texas.

Sometimes winters come in spiritual form, and I think that I've been experiencing a bit of one for the last few years... the longing and desire for the sun to come out again and shine on my face is stronger now than it has been in a long time.  

It's still winter, but I can't wait for the spring.

The Meaning Behind the Songs: "Free" (#2)

Listen to "Free" or see the lyrics.


I started writing "Free" when we were living in East Asia in 2006-07. It has to do with that checklist we all seem to make, and I especially tend towards... 

The year before, when we had lived in Dallas, I had really struggled as I felt like all the things I had put my identity in - being able to write songs, being a nice person that people liked, being a strong Christian, being a good friend - were crumbling away. I felt like I was becoming the complete opposite. For one, I was a total stressball with work. I also felt like a terrible friend, I had no creativity to write, and I felt very far from God.

Checklist FAIL, right?



"Free" is about the truths that made me realize how false the checklist really is.


     

The Meaning Behind the Songs: Thank You (#1)

Listen to "Thank You" or see the lyrics.


The first song on the CD, "Thank You," is what I call a shower song.  Why?  Because I started humming this melody in the shower and the song was mostly written about 30 minutes later!  That's always fun.


This song is about how meaning truly has infused everything.  From the flowers to the bees to the mountains to the ocean - the seemingly insignificant things in nature as well as the majestic things that we often feel dwarfed by.  He has infused our relationships with meaning, and every person we see walking around has meaning and purpose, dignity and beauty.      


But it's not meant to be a happy-go-lucky song about how everything is beautiful and meaningful.  There is an obvious need for redemption because, as beautiful as things are, things are also broken.  We are also broken.  That's what the second verse is about.


But both the second verse and the bridge look ahead.  There is a redemption coming.  Like the moon reflects the light of the sun, we see reflections and shadows of beauty and light and meaning now.  But later, when full redemption comes, we'll be able to see the sun itself - burning in all its brightness.


And for that, we are thankful.

The Meaning Behind the Songs: Sing

To celebrate the release of Sing, I'm going to do a little "series" on this blog about the meaning behind each of the 13 songs on the new album.  I love it when I go to a concert and the musician gives me just a little insight... Why did he or she write it, under what circumstances, what's the heart of the song, etc.?  I hope you guys feel the same way!


For Part 1 of the 13 part series, I want to talk about why the album is called Sing in the first place.  The title track is #9, but "sing" has been a theme that has been coming up quite a bit for me in these past few years as I've been writing and struggling with what it means to be a "musician" and a "singer-songwriter".  I noticed that the word "sing" came up quite a bit in my songs as well - you might notice it too as you listen!


So....


About a year ago, I was on a retreat in New Hampshire, thinking and praying about music and what to do with all of these songs that kept coming.  


What was I supposed to do with this music thing?  Was I doing enough?  Was I making too much of it or too little?  Am I supposed to go and try to be a rock star, or am I supposed to give up altogether?  Am I terrible but no one is telling me?   


An image of a huge choir came to my mind.  In this picture, I am just one of hundreds of singers in the choir.  We are all singing different harmonies, and even different melodies, but we are singing the same Song.  As I sing, I wonder to myself, "Am I loud enough?" and "Shouldn't I have a solo or something?" and "What if I stopped singing - would anyone notice?  Do I make a difference?  Can anyone even hear me?"


God answers these questions for me by answering just that last question... He says "I can hear you. You are singing for me.  It doesn't matter if anyone else can hear you or if you have a solo or how good you are. Just sing."


And so I do.