“My favourite Psalms are the real messy ones -- the kind that lament difficult situations that don’t change, but somehow singing about them makes all the difference.”
About three years ago I wrote a song called You Care that borrows from a couple of Psalms (songs) from the Bible. My favourite Psalms are the real messy ones -- the kind that lament difficult situations that don’t change, but somehow singing about them makes all the difference.
I pulled from Psalm 13, a song of depression. “Oh Lord, how long will you forget me? Forever?” “Return the sparkle to my eyes or I will die.”
I also pulled from Psalm 22, the song Jesus quoted on the cross: “My God, why have you forsaken me?”
These words express deep pain, pain we are all familiar with. When I started writing the song, I was experiencing multiple crises. The weight of parenting five kids was heavy. Our triplets were 2 ½ years old (just let that sink in for a minute). I was experiencing significant change at work. My wife was taking a major ‘risk it all’ leap in her career. I had a cancer scare.
Just one of these things would be enough. The demands on my faculties threatened to overwhelm me on a regular basis. I couldn’t process what was happening to me fast enough.
Through it all, I felt fortunate for the gift of musical expression. One July evening I sat down with some friends and crafted You Care.
When it was finished, my co-producer spoke about “the emotion in the room.” It was palpable. That song transferred a lot of pain into hope, merely by singing a statement of faith.
“I know that you care for me.”
I released You Care in 2018, and it made a few waves in my circle. People sent me videos of their kids singing the song. My artist friends wanted to do covers and remixes of it. I had tender and personal conversations with people about the song sparking faith that God actually cares about them.
The song has become a staple of my live show, and I had a wonderful experience playing it with two local artists at a concert in Ottawa. Chad Cecil and Amy Dagenais sang it with me, and when we reached the end of the song, the entire room seemed to hold its breath.
Chad, daring to break the silence, spoke into the microphone: “I don’t think we’re done singing yet!”
Instantly, the room burst into an acapella rendition of the chorus with enthusiastic clapping. Together, we sang, loudly, “I know that you care for me!”
Earlier this year, when the province of Ontario announced it was shutting down schools and some non-essential businesses due to COVID-19, my wife said: “You should re-release You Care.”
She thought it would connect with people in this difficult time, and I thought it timely as well. Some of the crises that spawned my earlier writing have faded away, but some are still a very present concern.
As I recently admitted in another lyric, I was: “Already overloaded before the COVID.”
For the last 18 months, I have been seeking spiritual renewal while working harder than I ever have in my life. I reduced my hours as a high school teacher to make an attempt at a semi-professional creative life, essentially taking on a second job.
Two jobs, five kids, a partner who is now a business owner and also working on a master’s degree. It’s a lot.
I’ve been breaking new ground in both jobs, trying to set a career path or paths that harness my greatest passions. As a dad, I’ve been fighting to be present.
I fight to stay off my phone, I fight to listen, engage and celebrate more than I criticize. Even as I talk about the same things and offer the same corrections. Even as my house bears the weight of the children and their interesting and sometimes destructive decisions.
And the noise. Five spirited, sensitive children with the gift of gab produce a lot of auditory stimulation. Physically, it’s a daily grind. Mentally, it’s a daily drain.
Spiritually, I’m crying. Every day, my spirit cries out to God, asking for direction and balance -- how do I move forward in my work, while having enough to give to my wife and kids?
And I cannot count the times this year when my spirit has so strongly felt the impression that my response to this dilemma is, to sing.
I will pray profusely, sigh heavily and groan spiritually, only to ‘hear’ one word.
Sing.
It is confusing, and anxiety producing, because singing doesn’t seem like it will solve my problems.
But I have done my best to be obedient. To fill my mind, and my heart, with song. When I wake up, I listen, searching the musical encyclopedia that is my spirit. What is the song my heart sings before I am overcome with the day’s thoughts? I grab my phone, put in some earbuds and listen.
And now, in the time of COVID, with two jobs and parental pressure and renewed racial strife, I’m experiencing immense amounts of grief. Singing is really all I have.
In the last week of May, I was in a daze. Somehow I did work. Somehow I served my kids. But I was walking in mud. My mental processes were painstakingly slow. I had an online show coming up that Friday. I felt the surge of anxiety that usually accompanies concert preparation, but I could not get myself prepared.
The day of the show, I finally admitted to a friend that I was not okay. He called me, we talked, and then we breathed together. He encouraged me to be authentic with my music. I performed that night with the music that gives me life. I sang, “I know that you care for me.”
Later that night I held a space. I don’t know how else to label it. It was a Zoom meeting for people who were hurting and processing the week that had been. I set up my DJ equipment to play music. I was hoping some of my friends would want to come and talk, or share poetry. Maybe it would become an impromptu open mic -- a time where collectively we could put to words how we were feeling.
Amazingly, the music did it for us. People sent in requests and I would just play songs that helped us process. I became a late night radio show host (which, truthfully, is all I ever wanted to be) for a few friends who slowed down their lives enough to share a collective moment. We stopped, to let our spirits sing.
It never feels like singing will help solve the problem, but somehow music is transcendent. It lifts our spirits to a higher plane where we see our trials from a new perspective.
Singing is an act of faith -- hope that the temporary surrender from furiously focusing on our problems will give us the peace we desperately crave.
In the painful silence of my heart I have been exhorting my spirit to sing. One song, over and over, until it becomes a discipline. Until it becomes a declaration of faith. Until hope returns.
The spirit of our society has the same need. The need for transcendence. The need for discipline. For peace. For perseverance. For hope. Collectively, maybe we can find ways to hold space for each other, and sing our sore hearts towards healing.
Photo by BRUNO CERVERA on Unsplash