Some people like to keep personal things personal and private. I have always preferred transparency and real, raw connection with people. Sometimes that has gotten me in trouble socially for being too open, but one of the beauties of music is I can be open about whatever I want and share the greatest life lessons I’ve learned by painting on the canvas of silence. I can tell stories of my life and feel like I’ve opened a door to my personal life without giving too many details; and I still feeling like my message is getting through in its entirety. The icing on the cake is the ability to enhance the message with the flow of melodies and harmonies that give healthy emphasis to the ideas I want to have most pronounced. Music gives songwriters a method of communication that makes people want to know more about the intended message and connect more deeply with their favorite artists.
My next two releases (coming in a few weeks), Hard For Me and Too Much To Lose, are fantastic examples of how I go about this songwriting process. They are stories about my personal life, specifically my greatest struggles and triumphs. Click on these links to follow my Spotify, Apple, or YouTube music profiles, and see them when they come out. Some of what you'll read next has to do with the message of song I've already released (linked in this entry at the end), It's Worn.
Pre-order/Pre-save here:
Hard for Me
Hard For Me is a song about my experiences leaving home for my mission service for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter of Day Saints, realizing afterwards I didn’t know even half as much about life as I thought I did. I learned and became a lot on my mission, so afterwards I remember thinking I had a solid plan for my life, that I had all my “ducks in a row.” I was convinced I knew who I was going to marry, where, how many kids I would have, how many boys and girls I would have, that I would be a web developer and somehow wipe pornography from off the face of the earth (I recovered from 20+ years of addiction). You can see how totally silly and even arrogant my assumptions where. God obviously had other plans.
He sent me back up to Canada where I lived with my late wife Lorraine for a 10 years, 8 months, where I spent most of that time in the suffocating darkness of addiction and the thick black shadows and aloneness I refer into in Hard For Me. As the some of the verse and chorus of the song says,
“and every time I cried to God, begging for relief,
He would light my way just enough to allow me to see
there was always a wise purpose
why the Lord asked hard things of me.
And in the end each time I'd realize
the divine design in what had to be;
and the longer I held tight to Him,
the more clearly I could see,
with every joyful change of heart
why it had to be so hard for me.”
Music was one of the biggest things that helped me become a better person up there. I could write several books (and have written at least one) about my struggles in Canada, dealing with mental illness, living in poverty, Lorraine's persistently and slowly worsening health problems, getting an average of 2-4 solid hours of sleep a night for most of those years and feeling like every time something went right, something worse would go wrong. The bridge of Hard For Me says:
"Every bitter, sleepless night,
Every futile, pointless fight,
With every failure on my part
To mend her broken heart
So many unresolved dead ends
All the painful tears we shed
I didn't know it at the time
The joy of God's design"
Most of those ten years is very insufficiently summarized in that bridge, but what I learned from and became from it - because I held on to my faith in Christ - is what Too Much To Lose is about.
For that song, I have to thank the artist Benson Boone. His song Beautiful Things was the reason I wrote it. I loved his message of what it's like to feel like you have everything that truly matters and realizing just how much it's worth. The first verse of Benson's song has a part where it says “there's no man as terrified as the man who stands to lose you.” He goes on in the song to ask God in each chorus to please let him keep these “beautiful things that [he's] got." That first phrase really struck me and I realized I can very much relate to Benson. What God has turned me into and blessed me with as a direct result of living His word is something I can't afford to lose, so I work every day to live in a way that won't give God any reason to take it all from me.
Part of the words to my Too Much To Lose, from the end of the first verse going into the chorus is as follows:
"I could finally see how God made me strong
And that's just too much to lose
So I fully refuse to
Let go of my faith in my Savior and Lord
I won't leave His side
Through the world may cry out
That I've lost my way
With my choice to obey
The peace that He gives me
Is worth any price
And when you feel it you'll know deep inside
It's too much to lose."
Both of these songs tell a very short version of a very long story about the kind of person God changed me into, that I have, as Too Much To Lose says,
“A wife and a home freely centered on Christ,
empowered with my covenants that help me to rise,
a sense of the truth no mortal notion can break
and a hope in my heart no demon can break.”
I have a lot more than that, too, but it's all been because of the goodness of God in my life. Every time I think I have a good plan, He has come along and given me multiple signals that tell me He has a better idea, and His ideas are, to be sure, way better than anything I thought I wanted or thought was possible for my life. If you've listened to It's Worn on this page, you can see how it relates to what I've talked about here and why getting worn out in the service of God will make you a better person. It's tiring sometimes, but it's a good tired. My service to Him includes trying to give you music that sets your heart on fire for what actually brings the most joy in life, His word, His truth, and His love.
You can pre-add Hard For Me and Too Much To Lose to your Spotify playlist now or pre-order wherever you stream your music. They are scheduled to be in stores May 6th. I hope when you hear them you'll have just a little bit better of a picture of the good our Jesus can do for you too in your life when you align your mind, heart and lifestyle choices with His plan for you. Trust me, His plan is always the better one in the end.