I arrived in Los Angeles, September 2005, all my possessions in the back of a green minivan. Bags and boxes. Clothes and instruments. A car full of questions.
"Will this pain make me bitter or better?"
"Will I continue to open my soul and offer whatever strength is in me?"
"Will I dare to dream?"
"Ok, there's my toothbrush, where did I put my confidence?"
Confidence and fear both took the 17-hour drive with me, but they just don't seem to get along, you know? They argued all the way down I-5, and eventually it dawned on me one of them would have to get out of the car.
I'm a very simple man. Suzanne is complex, and beautiful--she has all kinds of brilliant ideas. Me? I've had, like, four good ideas in my life!
Music was one of them. I have known since I was 8 years old that I hear music in a unique way. I have known since I was 21 that God speaks to me through music. I have known since I was 27 that I was designed to tell an important story. But for fear of rejection, fear of failure, or worse, fear of success, I hesitated and half-stepped up until that moment in fall of '05.
There's a moment in the Matrix when Neo turns to face Agent Smith in the train station, and Trinity says, incredulity all over her face,
"What is he doing?"
It's that moment in Return of the King when Aragorn turns into the cave, steel-faced, blade in hand, and says,
"I do not fear death."
It's that moment we face our deepest fears.
Out of the abundance of the heart comes the human voice. I was hurting so badly, i could barely breathe. Singing was out of the question, but that's what needed to happen. I had to sing or my heart would close up and suffocate me in a cloud of fear. And, again by Grace, I met Tom Macomber who provided the opportunity to sing into a microphone that recorded my first album.
The album isn't slick and shiny and polished. You can hear my broken heart rasping for breath. It's not my best work, but I tell you what, I may never accomplish a more important recording. It is the sound of a man afraid, and moving forward anyway. It ain't pretty, but it's real. It is the sound of defiance. Like the indomitable Love of the God who would not be stopped by death.
It happened while I was still bleeding.
In the months since, I've been supported to strength, and we're now working on the second album, making something together that chronicles a journey toward wholeness.
Without that first frightened move there would be no second. I am intensely grateful that in the moment of the question, God gave me an answer of confidence and not of fear.
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