The post where I wax nostalgic...

Because I can.

It's my blog and I can wax nostalgic if I want to.

This post will be long, meandering and sentimental. I'm going to take my time and not worry about being concise and easy to read. 

This one is silly and

just for me.

My entrance back into the church has been partially documented here, on this blog, somewhere.

After a rather intensive search, we found a rather small church that met in a school. I had gotten a flyer in the mail, and thought, "It's close. Why not?"

We went, like it and joined.

Pretty simple.

I had no idea what to expect from a church. It had been so long since I had been in one, and for the most part, the sort of church I grew up in still existed, but it was rather outdated. We visited a church like the one from my childhood, and it was comforting and familiar. It was also laced with memories, and I craved a fresh start. 

This church was good. It fit all of my criteria. The very best part of it were the people. I met, and still have, some of the best friends that I could have ever asked for or want.

This is a blessing that I do not and will not ever take for granted.

The preaching was fine and the worship was fine. I was such a baby Christian again, starting over again after a long absence from the church, and I was just glad to be back in church. I tried to relearn the culture and assimilate back into it.

It was just good to be back.

As time went on a bit, and I got my footing, I began to feel a little uneasy. I couldn't figure out why, exactly. I hadn't been back in church long enough to know what was "good" or "right" in a church or in this unfamiliar church culture.

 I began to learn how to read and study the Bible at home, on my own during this time too. I'm terribly embarrassed now at some of the resources I used in my study, but a child isn't embarrassed at how badly he walked when he first learned to walk. I was a baby in the faith, and I made mistakes. That's it. Moving on.

I studied hard. I dug into the Word as best I could. I had no idea what I was doing, but I was desperate for Him. I was guilt laden, struggling to learn how to be a mom to a daughter, trying to make friends - in short, I was exhausted. Shortly after joining our church, I got pregnant.

So now I was all those things and hormonal.

I recall crying through some services at church, just from the overwhelmingness of it all.

Time passed and I settled in. Had the baby boy. Made more friends. Joined a women's Bible study. Grew, learned, fellowshipped and settled into my new way of life.

It was good.

You know.

Good


Safe. Comfortable. Happy.

Weird.

Maybe it was here where it all started. I struggle to pinpoint when it started.

The tiny, barely detectable twinges of something.

Things certainly got weird here.

I wanted another baby. The husband did not.

I thought perhaps the Spirit had given me the desire for another child. When the two kids were in the bath, it felt like someone was missing. When they were playing in the backyard, yelling happily, there was a voice missing. When I made two plates of breakfast, lunch and dinner, there was a plate missing.

Maybe not. I wasn't exactly sure I was hearing correctly. I didn't know whether to fight for the baby or not.

I got pregnant.

I lost the baby.

I didn't know what to do. Maybe I was wrong.

I was definitely sad.

Now this. This was hard.

And this hard brought back all the other hard. I realized I was angry about all that other hard. It wasn't fair. I was hurt again and really tired of being hurt.

As I look back, this is probably where the journey started.

The real journey. The start of where I offered it all to Him.

I did get pregnant. And I studied more. I begged Him for more of Him. I fell in love with Him. I fell in love with His Word.

This complicated things.

This complicated everything.

Those twinges of discontent were growing. Something was wrong. My soul, my heart, my spirit and my brain were thirsting for something but I didn't know what.

I loved my church, my friends and I loved my women's Bible study. I plowed ahead with Him, because  everything in me was drawn to Him.

I had the baby. And that day things changed in our church a bit, coincidentally.

Things got harder.

It was after this, the exact time frustratingly escaping me, that I was introduced to a guy named David Crowder.

Now let me pause here to express again my unusual and abnormal love of music. It is more than music. It's like breathing for me. To live a day without music, I would literally have a panic attack. It plays in my head, in my dreams, in my thoughts. I think in song lyrics. I have it playing in my house nearly all the time. I wear earphones and listen that way when it's inconvenient for my family to hear my music. I play it when I'm cleaning, in the shower, in the car, cooking, exercising - all the time.

I'm sure it's annoying. Thankfully the kids also have this abnormal love of music. We enjoy it all together.

The first song I can really remember hearing was a song called, "There is No One Like You." It was on the album "Illuminate," and I devoured it.

Here was what part of my soul had been longing for. I needed to worship this way. My soul longed to praise Him this way. When I heard this music, it was like my spirit was finally allowed to express itself to the Savior the way it had wanted to but didn't know how. It was finally released in this channel, this conduit. This music opened a floodgate of praise from so deep in me.

I know that is weird.

But it healed something in me.

Maybe it was the quirkiness. Maybe it was the mix of modern and the old of the hymns. {I adore hymns} Maybe it was the lyrics. Maybe it was just that this was the perfect fit for me.

I was infinitely thankful.

The stirrings of uneasiness still swirled in me. They had been growing more and more. I tried so hard to figure out what they meant. What they wanted. What they needed. I poured over it with a sweet, patient friend. I felt alone, though. Everyone else seemed content with church and worship. I felt out of joint. Disconnected. It was just me. I wasn't better or worse or more holy or less holy. I didn't know what I was. I was just confused and wanted to be normal and content.

Instead it was growing.

This part of me, the part of me that longed to worship, was set at ease through this discovery of this man and his band's music. Not that he fixed everything, but God showed me through him that they way I longed to worship wasn't all that weird. There was someone else to had longed to worship this way, whatever this way was, and he had the talent and the passion to make a band and do it. I was comforted by that. If that makes sense.

On a side note, it was about this time that I finally relented to the same patient and kind friend's urging to listen to a sermon by another guy, ironically named David, about an issue that we as a church had been struggling with. I resisted for awhile, not even knowing what a podcast was or why you would want to listen to one.

This part is also chronicled here on this blog somewhere, but long story short, I listened to a sermon by this guy named David, and after an initial very judgmental attitude of what is this young guy gonna teach me? I proceeded to scribble page after page of notes during that introductory sermon.

I remember sitting back in my chair when it was over and thinking, "This is how my brain has been longing to be taught."

Not that that makes my brain any better or smarter or larger or holier than anyone else's brain. It was just as my heart and soul had longed for the music I had recently found, my brain and heart and soul had been longing for the Biblical teaching that this man delivered. I needed this sort of teaching about the God I was desperate for and about the Bible that I loved and was struggling to learn from.

I not only learned what a podcast was, I started listening to sermon after sermon after sermon.

I felt not so weird again.

How we ended up at this David's church is another story also told here somewhere else, but that's not the point of this blog post exactly. But it is part of this sweet story about how God used two Davids to not only make me not feel so weird, but to nourish and teach, comfort and encourage, lead, guide and direct me. And to push me on...

And the happy and rather rare occasions that we get to sing a David Crowder song as worship before a sermon is one of my favorite things.

So the years pass and David Crowder's music continued to be an almost daily part of my life.

I got to see him in concert two years ago. It was such a sweet blessing to see this band perform. I got to go to one of my favorite cities to visit and go to the concert with one of my oldest and dearest friends who moved away years ago and spent a childless day (a rarity) with her. Sweet blessing.

Fast forward to a sunny day in May. I was waiting for my mom on the patio of one of our favorite restaurants to meet the kids and me for lunch when I casually checked my emails. There was one from the David Crowder Band.

We're breaking up.

I was sad, but I also completely understood. I was mostly happy for their families...

One last tour.

I wanted to see them one more time. The kids had wanted to see them last time I went to see them. I wanted them to see this band. I wanted them to experience a show.

I chose a date. Again, in one of my favorite cities.

I called my same friend.

Go with me?

She worked out a crazy schedule with her now teenage daughter. Her mother-in-law died a couple of weeks before. I wasn't sure how it was going to work out. I didn't want this to be too much for her or her family. She said, "No. I need this..."

It was the night after a 7 hour special church service our church has. I was going to be tired.

A road trip with just me and the kids.

I didn't care. I just wanted to go and be there.

It was a hard week before. Dark and heavy and hard. Too hard. Too deep. I struggled through it wanting so much to be obedient and pleasing and Christ honoring and glorifying and I failed, over and over and over and over and over again.

By the time our van was hurling itself eastward, I was a mess. Battling inside to hold it together. To be strong and determined. To set my face like a flint. To be rooted and grounded. Undeterred.

We had to stop too many times. We got lost. {yes, even with a GPS} We found the theater and the line was long and I felt vulnerable in this city and lonely and lost and for some completely inexplicable reason, scared.

I was so completely exhausted by and frustrated with myself.

We climbed the stairs to this old and simply gorgeous theater to the very top. I wanted the kids to be able to see. We smashed in our seats and soon my sweet friend got there.

I breathed. It was okay.

Soon they were on stage.

Let this be an offering to You, Lord. I just want to praise you. 


The music started and I kid you not, they played song after song that were my favorites. I could not have created a better playlist. They played old, obscure songs that were my favorite. They sampled one of our other favorite artists. Every song they played, I would laugh and thank the Lord.

My favorites

I felt bathed in light. I had been surrounded by darkness and this was a warm bath of light. Of comfort. Of His grace. Of His reassurance.

It won't always be so dark. There is light coming...


This sort of light. The place where He is. The place where beautiful and pure worship of Him illuminates all the sad, dark places of my heart.

And this sort of praise makes me want to see His face. And worship Him forever.

With every song I was convinced that God has made that setlist just for me.

For me.

Why not for me? Never mind all the other people there. It was all for me.

Of course it wasn't, but it felt like it was and in the midst of all this that life is now, I swam in that clear stream of His love.

And we had a blast. I saw the kids' faces. They jumped and praised and sang and laughed and loved it.

It just couldn't have been better.

One of my favorite songs is my John Mark Macmillan, just also happened to open for this band. {His music also means so much to me.}

It's called "How He Loves," and Crowder Band's cover of it is one of my favorites.

During the encore John Mark came out and played it with them.

I thought that it couldn't get any better than that. Really, I did.

I have this friend that has had a really hard four years. I mean Job-like hard, with nearly every possible calamity and hardship you could imagine.

She found a song by David Crowder on a blog and couldn't find it anywhere online. She called to ask if I had it or knew where she could get it. I didn't. It was old. Really old and out of print. It was from an album he had done when he was mainly just a worship band guy at a church.

She was sad. She just needed this song.

I understood. We couldn't find it. Anywhere.

This same friend went with her son and daughter-in-law on a trip where she cared for her granddaughters while her son led worship for a youth camp. She was in her son's car, in the passenger seat, with her daughter-in-law driving when she, my friend, for some reason, reached into the compartment on the door of the car. She pulled out a single cd with nothing written on it.

What is this? she asked her daughter-in-law.

She didn't know.

My friend put it in the cd player and the song she had been searching for filled the car.

She and her daughter-in-law laughed in disbelief. Unbelievable.


A gift

She brought me the cd, and we decided that since it was out of print and we had no way to buy it, I could put it into my computer.

I did. And it became a gift to me. The music more simple than the band they would evolve into, it was heartfelt and precious. Some early versions of songs that I would grow to love later. But one song, the song that had captured her heart initially, also captured mine.

All I Can Say

Lord I'm tired
So tired from walking
And Lord I'm so alone
And Lord the dark
Is creeping in
Creeping up
To swallow me
I think I'll stop
Rest here a while

And didn't You see me cry'n?
And didn't You hear me call Your name?
Wasn't it You I gave my heart to?
I wish You'd remember
Where you sat it down

Chorus:
And this is all that I can say right now
i know it's not much
And this is all that I can give
yeah that's my everything

Bridge:
I didn't notice You were standing here
I didn't know that
That was You holding me
I didn't notice You were cry'n too
I didn't know that
That was You washing my feet

I would play it over and over again. A prayer. In worship.

So thankful for the song, the music and how He brought it to my sweet friend who needed it. 

So as this precious concert came to a close, and oh how I didn't want to to end, David Crowder stepped up to the mike and strummed a few notes on his guitar. 

I started to shake and tears sprang to my eyes. 

It was this song. 

Oh, Lord!!!!

The audience responded. They knew it too. We all sang it at the top of our lungs. Tears streamed down my face. So many people there. So many had hurts and hardships and were tired and sad and lonely too. Hands were lifted. Faces to the sky. We were all joined by a sweet song to a God who cares. Our cry together. 

It was almost too much. 

When it was over, with shaking hands, I texted her:

He played your song. 

We were supposed to go see him together in concert another time. I had hoped and prayed he would play it for her then. We had tickets. We were ready and excited.

I ended up in the emergency room with my daughter that night. She went with her daughters, and I was sad but glad she got to go. 

And they didn't play it that time. They did play it this time. I hated she missed it, but I was so glad I was there. 

I'm thankful for the years this band has given to Him. I'm thankful for the music and how it helps me worship. I'm thankful for their humor and their uniqueness and their love of Christ. I'm so thankful that years ago God blessed me with their music. I'm so thankful I got to see them with my kids. 

And they have one more show, in January, back in that city. I don't think it's possible for us to get to that concert... but that's okay. Really.

I'm happy and content with the chance to see this show. This was a wonderful night, and I'm thankful that the gift of the music they have given will last a long, long time.

Here are the pictures from that night...

This is obviously a picture from the stage taken by the band.  

And here is the song. 

If somehow someone made it to the end of this epic post, then this is the treasure you get. One of my favorite songs ever.