In The Sun.
Music and I can be miserable lovers. On again, off again. Passionate, then passive. I am inconsistent and inattentive, and Music just plays hard to get. Hearing him is a reminder of my unfaithfulness and unkept promises, yet he gives me silence when I finally try to draw near. And then, suddenly, songwriting season hits, and we are back together again! Melody and harmony, beautifully united, at last. We walk alongside each other, navigating the push and pull of the process, not always with ease, but ever wrestling until together we win. Our beauty we find in this season is a compromise and a celebration of our strengths. I bring passion and story and poetry, while Music just longs to sing. Here, I drag him along with me for the emotional ride of reason and rhyme, and there he gently leads me to sit in goodness and gratitude, where I’m reminded to just enjoy the simplicity of the wonder he brings.
My musical journey has taught me a lot about love and relationships, because loving Music is heavenly, but it is not effortless. Some days there is such ease in writing, a chemistry and a flow, then the next I find nothing to talk about, and all is dull and an uphill battle. Music on a good day is thrill and delight, but the hard day teaches patience and diligence, for Music gives two options: perseverance, or no music at all.
My Tomorrow Mind album was a five year process, little interactions and flirtations that became long conversations and hours spent together, working and growing and developing through time. Each track was a season of life, and I welcomed song into each struggle to help me navigate the mystery and unknown. Each time Music entered the scene, I recognized God in my midst. Even in death, in shame, in disappointment, in hope, in grief, in anger, in change: Emmanuel.
The way Music helps me to see God With Us, is the reason I fall in love with him every time we are near. Music is God’s gift to man, glory that cannot be seen or touched, but invading everything we do and experience with colour and warmth. I thank God for the songs He has given me over this last portion of my life. When I sing them, I am enveloped in testimony, remembrance, closure, clarity. In The Sun is the sound of simple gratitude, for these songs are an undeserved crown upon the most difficult years of my life.
After it all, after the rain, all’s well in the end.
When all was lost, when all was dead, I found a friend.
Today, Music and I are distant, apathetic, and the room is quiet. Our love is not young, but we have history, something we have made through the years. It is something valuable that I’m certain we will have the honour of building upon again soon. So here’s to the songs we have already won, the songs still to come, and the silence we sit in today, knowing that these days too are ones of great importance - tomorrow they will be the stories we are learning to tell.