ugliness.

Wow. It’s been almost a month since I’ve written. I’ve not had much to say, not much in my mind and heart that bore writing down. A lot of discontent, whining, and self-pity in there, though. Perhaps writing would have helped me process more quickly, instead of wallowing. But anyway.

I’ve come to the conclusion that my loves are all disordered. I can’t properly love my husband or my kids, and I feel dissatisfied in my relationships with them, because I’m trying to get something out of those relationships which they were not meant to provide. I want complete fulfillment. I want assurance that I’m special. I want them to make me happy, perfectly happy, all the time. I want excitement, creative inspiration, and comfort. I want the big black hole of need in me to be filled, to stop sucking everything in and around me into it.

Surprisingly, my charming (haha!) toddler, adorable baby, and wonderful husband, are completely unable to do that for me. They aren’t made to.

My destructive black hole of need can only be met and fulfilled in Jesus. So I wait, I sit, I gripe, complain, and reach and long, all in vain insofar as I reach and grasp for anything and anyone other than him. My family is wonderful. My relationships are good. Music is beautiful. I just can’t be the person I was created to be, the one I long to be, simply by wringing the good out of them. I can’t. It won’t work. It doesn’t.

And perhaps, while I wait in this place, while I long for the love of all loves to be more real to me than all of these other good (or silly, or selfish, or downright ugly) things I use to try to satiate my ravenous need, perhaps it is his grace that is allowing me to feel the emptiness of this disordered life. The desperate discontent of the heart not fulfilled in him.

It is ugly, ugly. But Jesus is in the business of going deep in my heart, deeper than I feel particularly comfortable with, to name and root out one more layer of sin keeping me from him.

I keep thinking of this prayer I wrote in a journal. I wrote it almost a decade ago, but its desperation rings truer now than I even knew then.

Oh God.

Oh God.

Oh God.

Be real.

 

 

p.s. all of this heart-ugliness discussed should not in any way insinuate that my toddler is not fun, my baby is not adorable, or my husband is not wonderful. they are that, and more! and i’m so thankful for them, for sunny yet blustery days, and for the way my house smells like the freshness of spring when i get to open my windows now. just so you know. it’s never all one thing. there’s good aplenty mixed in with the ugliness.

psalm 118.

A few weeks ago I recorded a song for a new “flash mob” compilation. Basically, a bunch of musicians and worship leaders around the country wrote songs inspired by the Hallel psalms (Ps. 113-118) which were traditionally sung around Passover. So the disciples and Jesus would have sung them at the Last Supper. It is remarkable to me that, with all the years I’ve read the Bible, I still forget how it all ties together.

Anyway. Once again, for this compilation I rewrote the melody for an old hymn based on Psalm 118. We recorded the bones of the song (all of my parts) in two hours one morning, and Nathan added in extra instrumentation later that day. Having to work around childcare for the kids definitely makes things interesting!

Had a lot of fun re-writing and recording this. Hope you enjoy it!

 

Psalm 118

balancing act.

I have been writing a lot lately. This is a good thing. A really good thing. It’s exciting, intoxicating, and I feel like I’m being more myself, after a long, long hiatus. But the funny thing is, even with the great joy that writing brings to my life, I’m having to fight for contentment in a whole new way.

I keep thinking that some magical combination of circumstances will provide the perfect environment for contentment, like someday I’ll just be content without having to try. Because that’s how humans work, right? Eventually we achieve perfect peace of mind. Right. Still, it’s been kind of surprising to me that, even with this new motivation and enjoyment of writing, I’ve not been happy with things as they are. Under all the excitement and satisfaction, there is lurking discontent. Like, why can’t I just play music all the time? How long til the kids go to sleep again so I can write? If only I could just have people over to play music all the time, every week. If only it were simpler to find someone to watch the kids so I could record. On and on. Why? If only… And while I recognize that there is a sort of divine discontent, the kind that presses me on to bigger and better things, the kind that forces me to write even when I don’t want to, that’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about feeling sorry for myself.

It’s all birthed from this feeling I have that I just want to have fun all the time. I deserve it. I just want things to be easy.

It’s humbling to realize that even in this exciting new chapter for my writing, in which I feel more like a WRITER than I ever have before, more like a person honing a craft rather than adrift upon the fickle sea of inspiration, I still find myself fighting for balance, moderation, contentment. There’s a seemingly bottomless reservoir of whining and complaining in me, and when I think about the wild joy and hope that springs up in me when I’m writing even the most depressing song (I mean, it’s winter, I can’t help it), well, I’m a little embarrassed.

Oh, for contentment to overwhelm my ungrateful heart. I want to be able to plod, and plod well.

Dust to Dust.

I wrote this offertory this past week during various nap times. Of necessity, during the writing and practicing of this song, I sang really quietly, but had a vision in my head of it being something bigger. At practice on Thursday night, I heard it for the first time at full volume, and each of the other musicians brought something special to the mix. The recording I’m sharing was made during the first service on Sunday, and it was only the third time we’d played the song together! It’s so great to play with such talented individuals.

The song is a reflection on my nature, and inability to change my heart, and a plea to God for mercy. It was inspired by the Ash Wednesday service, and a sermon preached a few weeks ago about Peter’s denial of Christ.

I’m both really proud of this song, and really thankful for it. It is one of the songs I’ve written in this new era that 2013 is becoming for my writing, in which it is becoming more of a discipline and less about waiting for some hazy inspiration to strike (although I still love when that happens). Hope you enjoy it!

Dust to Dust.

reaching…

I must’ve thought my life would never change. That I would always have room in my head for these songs, that I would always sing them. Because I sure didn’t leave any record of them, other than jotted down titles, or hints of titles, in a crumbling notebook full of sketches and half sentences. Precious few recordings, no lyrics written down that I can find, and now I sit here, blank. Reaching hard with my mind toward the remnants of choruses, the shadows of verses that are lurking just beyond reach.

I can’t remember the songs. Life did change, and sleep deprivation left precious little storage space for secondary items like songs of a by-gone era.