my girl

I just have to tell you all how proud I am of my wife. Sunday morning I was watching her (as I do from time to time when she doesn’t think I’m looking) interact with a bunch of kids at church. She was leading them around the facility, keeping them in line (how exactly do you do that, anyway?). She was working her way through the group, interacting with each kid, calling them by name, making them feel special. I watched how each one of them lit up when she paid personal attention to them.

I was impressed by that, because although I feel very strongly in the importance of interacting with the kids at church, I couldn’t do it. I’m not gifted that way. Give me a room full of 5 year olds and I will be duct taped to the floor in under 12 minutes, I assure you. But somehow this wife of mine leads them to something great. I really don’t know how she does that, but I’m glad that she does.

She possesses strengths that I simply don’t have. When I was single and living on my own, I had my cable shut off and my newspaper stop delivery. Why? It’s not because I didn’t have the money to pay them, I simply forgot. I don’t know how many times you have to forget before they actually come out and turn off your cable, but that’s how many times I have the capacity to forget things. She thrives on organization in a way that I will probably never understand but am exceptionally grateful for.

Right now she is doing our budget. Again. She pays very close attention to it. I think she actually balances the checkbook every single day. Maybe she takes Sundays off, I don’t know. She keeps the money flowing the direction that it needs to go and everybody gets paid that needs to get paid. That’s a great mystery to me how that works.

Here is another mystery. Every now and then, my undershirts disappear and are replaced by brand new ones. I didn’t know that you were supposed to throw undershirts away, but apparently those things do actually have a shelf life. I don’t know what the time frame is for a t shirt, but all I know is that every now and then they move away, and new ones move in to take their place. I don’t know how they even know its time to move on, but somehow they do.

I think about all the things I was when I was single – I was carefree, independent, I had all kinds of free time though never any clean laundry, always had extra money to spend on myself.

But then I think about all the things that I am since I got married – happy.

Like I said, it’s a mystery. How does she do that? She possesses strengths that I don’t have and probably never will. She is a good mom, supportive wife, and my very best friend. I am very proud of who she is and wouldn’t want to picture life any different than the way it is right now. With all my faults and moodiness and let's face it I can be hard to live with, somehow she still loves me and takes care of me, and for that I'm grateful.

Anyway, she probably doesn’t hear it enough, so there it is. Just thought you might like to know:)

Make It Yours

I've been thinking about Linda lately. If you don't know Linda, she's a gal who doesn't get out much these days because of some severe health issues. We used to see her quite a bit at church, when she couldn't sing anymore, she decided to continue by learning sign language. She was on the praise team for a little while leading through sign language before her health problems got to be too much for her.

Anyway, I've been in kind of a reflective mood lately, thinking about where I am and how in the world I got here, and Linda is actually a key part of it. With all the work on the CD project, it's kind of cool to look back on the songs that have been written over the last 6 years and the different circumstances I was in when I wrote them.

In college, I wanted to write music but just could never seem to get started. I had a professor who took an interest in me (thank you Brother Read), and spent a lot of time trying to help me. Blank pages were the worst, I could just never seem to get started. He'd try giving me thoughts to get started on, themes, even titles, etc. Finally I started making traction when he started giving me texts. He would take a poem or an old hymn and take away the music, and challenge me to write new music for it.

I think that's when I finally started going with writing music. I could never start from nothing, I needed material or rules to begin with (like start in the key of E and use these chords... etc.) This helped me break out of the block that I was in and begin trying out new material of my own.

When I graduated from college and moved to Michigan, I was still somewhere in between the two places. Enter Linda and her poetry. She worked in Neonatal Intensive Care. I can’t even imagine dealing with premature babies and the related health problems every single day. But that’s what she did. She wrote a poem for one particular family called, “A Miracle of Love” and asked if I might set it to music for her to give to this family.

That set in motion a lot of things, in retrospect. It was when I first got interested in recording and started using computer recording software. It was also an opportunity to keep moving ahead with my songwriting. We recorded the song in the bathroom at our rented office space. I think I still have a picture somewhere of the restroom door with a “recording in progress” sign taped up to it.

After that, Linda and I collaborated on a number of projects. She didn’t have any music background, but sent me lyrics every now and then. Sometimes they struck me and I used them, sometimes I didn’t. The thing for me was that I was able to keep writing songs even though I wasn’t really writing lyrics yet. Soon we started co-writing lyrics, we collaborated on a couple of things that way. On a lot of the more recent stuff, I’ve been able to write my own lyrics.

But you know, I often wonder what would have happened if Linda hadn’t been in my life to keep me going. Would I be writing anything today? Would I have continued to rewrite old hymns or random poetry I found on the internet? I really don’t know, but it makes me wonder.

It’s funny how seemingly inconspicuous events and random people in your life conspire to make you who you are today, you know?

Anyway, here is why I’ve been thinking about all of this, because one of the earliest songs that Linda wrote all of the lyrics to is still around in rotation at Lighthouse. Make It Yours is one of the first songs that we wrote together. Some other songs have come and gone, but that one has something cool about that I can’t quite place. As a song that we’ve been playing for about 5 years now, I wasn’t sure if it was going to make it onto the recording. But you know, we pulled it out last week and started playing it, and it was like hearing it for the first time again.

I don’t know, maybe I analyze stuff too much, but its just cool to see something that was a big part of our lives 5 years ago still hanging around, even though it seems like absolutely everything else in our worlds have changed since then.

So here is the recording of that song from last week’s rehearsal. I’ve been setting up a microphone out in the room to get a basic demo of the songs. It helps when we get together the next week and say, “Now what did we do on this one again?” Hopefully it will give you an idea of what we’re working on, and maybe just a small taste of what to look forward to on the recording.

The 24 hour rule

I have this rule when it comes to writing songs, I call it my 24 hour rule. When I write something new, I have to wait 24 hours before I let anybody else hear it. This is so that I can listen to it again a day later when I'm not too close to it, and decide if I really like it or not. If I'm still not sure, I might float it by one or two people whose opinions I trust. But generally it takes that long for me to decide if I really do like the song, really do believe in it, etc.

This last time I taught in church, somebody asked me right after the service how I thought I did (I taught on the DaVinci Code, you can hear it on the lcmchurch website). I think I was a little surprised that I couldn't really come up with an answer. Upon further reflection, I think it has to do with the 24 hour rule. Writing a sermon is a lot like writing a song, and it is always a work in progress right up until it is delivered on Sunday mornings. In fact, this last time I left for church still not knowing how I was going to end it. I had some thoughts and options rolling around in my head, but still no definite direction. I know I tend to procrastinate as well, but this is actually something different from procrastination. Call it living in the moment or whatever you'd like, but the message is not actually written and finished until after it is delivered.

That means that according to my 24 hour rule I probably can't really tell if I liked it or not until Monday morning:) So when the question came on Sunday, I couldn't come up with an answer.

Now that I've had time to reflect, I think I can answer the question a little clearer:
I believe whole heartedly in what I said. I believe very strongly in the conclusions that I reached and presented. I believe that the reason people prefer Dan Brown's version of history is because the Church has left so much room for doubt throughout history. I believe that the reason people doubt God today is because the Church has left little room for the world to believe in it. I also believe that if the Church were really in her glory, if the Church was working the way that it ought to be, the mirror image of God on earth, that nobody would pay much attention to stuff like the DaVinci code. I honestly believe it wouldn't really matter, and that if Christians want to get upset about people reading and believing secret histories and bloodlines, then we really have only ourselves to blame.

The challenge to a message like this is trying to put it in a positive light. You certainly can't put a positive spin on the crusades or the inquisition or witch trials. There is no way to "spin" that and we shouldn't even try. But if you look at the good that the Church does, has done, and can do, even as fragmented as it might be throughout history, think about what it could still do. Think about what God's people could do if we only acted like God's people! What kind of a difference would that make?

It might be hard to swallow. I think people might have come to hear about the DaVinci code so that I could tell them why we are right and everyone else is wrong. I'm afraid that it is not that simple. But here is the key, and this is what makes it worth talking about and taking up this random space on the web -- we can do better. Those of us who call ourselves Christians can live the way that Jesus taught us to live. We can spend time going after the things that actually honor God, and not the thing that only make us fell more important than everyone else. We can actually love our neighbors, and not pass by them and hope for the best. We can actually love our enemies, and stop wishing them the worst. We can share our surplus with those who don't have enough, we can settle for nothing less than truth and honesty in our own lives. In short, we can be Christlike.

Now who wouldn't want to be a part of a church like that?