This blog post is not about the journey into songwriting. Rather, it is about defining moments on this journey. I guess, because I am a writer, I think in terms of stories or songs having a beginning, and an end, and a middle. I think I am still in that middle portion of my story – at least I hope I am. But if not, then the final defining moment might have happened last night. And I am completely at peace with that
thought.
In junior high, I started collecting “words” in a notebook. I would hear a story that touched my heart and I would write it down in this journal of sorts. When I would be moved by a quote somewhere I would
memorialize it on these pages. I no longer have that journal because it was lost in a house fire when I was about 15 years of age. But I still have a couple of those stories stored in my mind. In fact, I just took a break from my writing to look online to see if I could find them. I did. And once again I realized how
they spoke to my heart.
As I look back now I can remember that I began to try to create new “profound” statements like the ones tucked away in that journal. I don’t think I thought of myself as a writer. I was just someone who wanted to be remembered and because I was not a person who liked to share her thoughts aloud, I thought if I wrote deep things down on paper that maybe they would touch someone’s heart one day just like these words in my journal had touched mine.
And then came poetry. I think that like most young poets, my words were born out of my young teenage angst and sadness. We don’t know what to do with the raging, crazy, dark, passionate and unseen thoughts and feelings that we have at that age when all of life is changing and we are shifting from little children to pubescence and on toward adulthood. So mine spilled out into words on the page. I guess I had spent so much time reading that it was only natural to display itself in this manner. In the 9th grade I had an English teacher who frustrated me to no end. I would turn in these “phenomenal” words and he would “lose” them. He claimed to be disorganized, apologized, and asked that I write it again. He did this on more than one occasion and I was not very happy with him. But I continued to rewrite my work – always making adjustments and improvements to my words as I re-thought them. At the end of the school year, he told me that this was purposeful on his part. He told me that he thought I had the potential to be a good writer one day and the only way to get me to improve was to get me to re-write. I want to complain about his tactics here. I want to say that there might have been a better way. But since I cannot say that with certainty, so I accept that his challenge to me made me stronger. And more motivated.
In college I started dating a songwriter. He had written about 200 songs before I met him. And it was kind of a natural progression for me to move from poetry into lyric. And it worked for us because we were both deep thinkers and we both loved to tell a story. He knew how to do that through music and by this time, I was getting a little better at doing it through words. Shortly before we were married, he got his first call from Nashville. Amy Grant wanted to put one of his songs on her next record. A year and a half later we were married and off to Tennessee to pursue a writing contract in the contemporary
Christian music industry. I remember the first royalty check we received. It was more money that we had made in three months of working at a “real” job. We didn’t even have a bank account yet, so we cashed the check and sat in the parking lot and counted the crisp $100 bills again and again. We were now doing
this for a living. Who’dathunkit?
There were many defining moments leading up to becoming a writer/songwriter. There have been many firsts … and many more defining moments over the years of writing and working in Nashville and in the years that have followed. Good moments that encouraged me and spurred me on to do more and bad
moments that only succeeded in making me a survivor and overcomer. For sake of this post, I will stick with the positive ones – just a few more.
Defining moment
~ Hearing a song you have written played on the radio – not just the first time, but every time.
Truly defining moment
~ Having someone come up to you after a concert to tell you their story and how much those words on the radio have meant to their soul.
Defining moment
~ Sitting in the office of an artist you have listened to your whole life – whose albums you have played
over and over again – waiting to write a song together for his next album
Truly defining moment
~ Having that same artist ask if we can meet at his house instead of his office so that we can just sit and talk and pray and “be” together because he just found a few days ago that his wife has cancer.
Defining moment
~ Being “signed” by one of the greatest country artists of all time
Truly defining moment
~ Hearing him call you a friend because you have never asked him for money, you have always told him
the truth even when it hurt, and you loved him unconditionally when the rest of the Christian world has forsaken him because he “fell from grace”
Defining moments
~ Being nominated for Dove Awards, having songs go to the top 10 on the Billboard Christian charts, receiving gold and platinum records
Truly defining moments
~ Clearing the room in your house where all of those awards have hung and the space in your heart that all of those accolades have filled to make room for mentoring young artists in what truly defining moments really look like.
You see, truly defining moments are the heart of what God is doing – not the outward appearance of what He is doing.
I haven’t written many songs this year (2013). In fact I think I have only completed one song with the help of some dear friends. It is a song about the place where I now live. It is a simple song about the people with whom I now spend time. It is my simple expression of what I think God’s heart is for worship in this place – and for every other place for that matter! I will share the lyric in a tab at the top of the page. As I said at the beginning of this post, if God does not grant me any more defining moments in my life on this planet, then this last one will be the best finale for my life.
Defining moment
~ The thrill of sitting in a 6000-seat auditorium listening to a recording artist sing one of your songs
Truly defining moment
~ Sitting on the front row in worship last night as twenty people with different languages and cultures stirred me to the depths of my soul as they lifted their voices together to sing this new song. (HOLY) I had heard their voices as I was writing the song. I had heard their hearts as I put my pen to the paper. Last night there were only 20 voices. Last night there were only 20 hearts. But it sounded like hundreds. Because in that moment I think I got to hear what God was hearing all along. For me, it was a taste of heaven.
What are your defining moments? What has He been doing in you since the very beginning?