Homeless songs.

So, to explain, I need to go back in time a little. Well, maybe a lot. Ten years ago, my life was full of drama. Dating drama. I wrote songs about it. I wrote ideas for songs in lots of notebooks. I never finished many of my favorite ideas. First of all, I started dating an awesome guy, and I married him.  And who has time to write songs about drama when you’re having fun living life and being in love? Second of all, I started writing and recording a lot of religious music.  I loved it and still do, but those drama ideas never fit on any of those albums. So there the ideas sat for many years.

Lately, I’ve been in the mood to finish some of those ideas, and it’s been fun. In a way, the songs have turned out oddly inspirational in spite of the drama, since I now know how the stories ended and I can write about them from the top of the mountain instead of the depressing bottom of it. I can tell myself things I wish I had known or that I would have listened to way back then. Hindsight is 20/20. Maybe I can help someone else who is wasting their time on someone dumb. Or having a hard time getting over something similar to what I have in a song. Or maybe not. Maybe the songs will do no good, but to make me have a fun time writing them.

No matter what, I’m going to share a few of them with you. Why are they homeless songs? Because I honestly have no idea where they belong yet. They don’t have a home on any album or movie or anything like that.

To kick things off, here’s a song called “Big Yellow Moon.”  #mce_temp_url#

Here’s the story: I was walking home from a songwriter’s showcase at the university and my secret crush was walking along about twenty feet in front of me. Eventually I had the guts to catch up with him, but not enough guts to actually say anything coherent. And a couple of blocks later we went our separate ways. If I had been braver, this song is what I might have said. At any rate, it was what I was thinking.

Hope you enjoy. More to come.

Change is good, part 2

I think it’s been about a year since I unveiled the new website and started this blog. The title of the first entry here was “Change is good”. And I agree. Change can be heaven sent. Change can be wanted so badly that it hurts sometimes. I have felt that way in my life. Or maybe at the very least, sometimes we just feel like change would be nice.

I’ve got to be honest with you. Being a professional musician is quite a roller coaster. Sometimes there are huge ups and downs, and sometimes you just have to accept that there is some waiting in line that happens. I’ve been working on a lot of exciting things, and sometimes it is hard to wait to see what will come of it all.

So much of a music career involves creating “new” all the time. New songs. New shows. Everything has a swift shelf life. It’s enough to make even the most successful musicians I know get totally frantic. Every once in a while I have to take a step back, open my eyes, and realize that the very foundation of my life is made up of the things that I desperately hope and pray will always be the same.

At the very top of that list is my beloved family.

I recently had the great honor of singing at BYU Women’s Conference for a gigantic crowd of lovely women. I think there were at least 10,000 people there. I sang a song I wrote for a new compilation album from Deseret Book called “Women of Hope”. My song on the album is called “My Favorite Dream”. Here are the words to the first verse and chorus:

I have dreams, they’re big enough to touch the sky

I launch them as the days go by

I dream them as I hold your hand

And I always try to understand

The reason that I’m in this world

I wonder as the days unfurl

And I’m running out of time to grant all the wishes that I had as a little girl

But even if I don’t cross the ocean blue or climb the tallest mountain

It isn’t as tragic as it seems

There are a million things I want to do, but only if I can be with you

And I know what forever means

And  you are my favorite dream

The irony isn’t lost on me that the song I just sang to the biggest audience of my life is a song about how my very most important audience is actually made up of three people. Joe and my girls. And I guess you’d better add God to that list. And maybe my mom and dad. But you get the idea.

I was recently commissioned to write a song about the Mormon Temple in Manti, Utah. I wasn’t very familiar with the history when I began the project. I drove down there to meet with a woman who has lived in the shadows of that gorgeous building all her life and knew all about it. I took a couple of books with me that she let me borrow. When I got home I decided to write the song about the people who physically built that temple. It was a daunting project until I decided to use real names of people and have pieces of the verses be about the specific jobs they did. The song began to write itself. I felt an amazing spirit as I thought of those real people. I thought about the people who came to work each day and just chiseled stone. Or hammered nails in the framework. It all took a very long time. In my quest to include at least one female name in this song, I did a google search and stumbled across the life history of a woman who helped make some carpets for the temple, and baked 40 loaves of bread a day for her family, the workers, and other people in need.

So I’ve been buried in stories about people who hammered  all day. Or baked bread that was immediately devoured. Or donated all they had, with no thought of reward. Some of those people died before the temple was even done. But together they built something amazing. And when I read back about their lives, they’re heroes because they kept working at it a little each day.

So when it comes to my music career, I have to realize that some days will involve hammering lots of nails into an unfinished building. Hopefully I’m creating something beautiful, a little at a time.

And when it comes to my family, I have to remember that I am not just making food that is immediately devoured. The food goes into the tummies of little girls who had no doubt that I would feed them. The fact that I’m there to do it means something to them and to me. When I look back on my life I will remember the days our whole family sat together at our table and they threw spaghetti all over the floor, and I wiped the sauce off of their tiny lips. (Except Joe. his lips aren’t tiny and he’s actually mastered the twirly fork thing, and doesn’t just shove handfuls of noodles into his mouth with his bare hands.) Anyway those days will matter more to me in the end than the big audience days.

Change is good. It’s fun. It’s exciting. It’s necessary. But sometimes

I see this life I love

And I plead with God above

To leave it like it is.

Nothing compares to you. (Or is it, 2 U?)

Just kidding with you. This post has nothing to do with Sinead O’Connor OR Prince. But it has a lot to do with something they both have. (Especially Prince.) Confidence. I’ve always been fascinated by it because it’s a quality I’ve never been able to fully capture and understand, I have to admit. And the most random thing got me thinking about it lately. The New Testament. I’ve been reading lately, about all the times Jesus tells people to become more like a little child. I’ve read and heard about it all before, how the first will be last, and how much trust and faith and innocence children have, and all that stuff. Basically, I’ve always known that I have a lot to learn from kids. Now that I have kids of my own, I have even more to learn! They teach me things every day. One of the most interesting things I see about them lately though is confidence. Especially in my oldest, Sydney.

Sydney is four, and I can only think of three things that frighten her. #1, dogs. #2, bees. #3, the dark. Oh, and once I think she had a nightmare about a bear. That’s it. Know what doesn’t frighten her? Walking up to a complete stranger and saying, “Hi, I’m Sydney!” In fact, when she sees other kids and even some adults, she asks me, “Mom, who is that friend?” Everyone is automatically a friend unless they do something enormous that proves her wrong about them. I’m not even sure that’s ever happened.

She is also not afraid to get up onto a stage during sound check for one of Joe’s shows or my shows, when half the audience is already there, and start singing a song at the top of her lungs that she only half knows. She does it in style. Once, the early birds even gave her quarters and begged for more.

She is not afraid to try to do new things, even if they’re hard. She’s learning to read right now in pre-school. Sometimes when I read her a book at night she reads all the small words for me. Then she asks me if I can show her how to read the big words. She sounds them out, and when she gets stuck, she just asks for help without feeling silly about it at all.

I could try to tell you what it is like when she dances, but it’s impossible. Confident might be the only adjective I can find.

She is not afraid to try new foods. And if she ends up hating it, she’s not afraid to tell you very passionately.

She is not afraid to tell you exactly what she needs and then demand it.

Sometime, somehow, (I can only hope and pray that I’ve had something to do with this) she has come to believe that she is amazing, that there is no need to doubt herself, that she’s talented, beautiful and smart. She believes that if she can’t do something, it’s only because she hasn’t learned how to do it yet, but that she could if she ever felt like it and if it didn’t get boring.

She still has all the other biblical things about her that make her an amazing, innocent child. So here’s something amazing; when you mix it all together, you do NOT get pride. (At least not the evil kind of pride. Not the Pharisee kind.) You just get confidence.

How do I get that without being four years old again? There has to be a way. I wish I knew for sure. But maybe it all begins with believing in yourself, so much that there’s no need to be ashamed of the things you can’t do, or haven’t done yet. I feel a tiny bit closer to that feeling when I can see the faith that someone else has in me. Especially when I feel the faith that God has in me. I have flashes of confidence all the time, but I’d love for it to be more of a constant. I’d love for it to come naturally from within.

A couple of years ago, Sydney was playing with her costumes, and she was flying around the house in sparkly wings, like a butterfly. Then she dug a super hero cape out of the box and brought it over to Joe. He started taking the wings off of her but she got mad. She wanted both. So he velcroed it on. And she staggered around the room trying to pick which way to fly, with this clumpy mass of fabric on her back. She quickly backed on over to us, so that one of us could help her. She said in her almost three year old dialect that I can’t quite remember now, “You don’t need a cape if you’re already a butterfly.” The moment I heard it and translated it, I knew it meant something important. The meaning changes a little all the time. But what it means to me the most is that when you know for sure who you are and what you are meant to be, everything else makes sense.  You don’t need artificial helps. It has a lot less to do with fancy clothes you buy or how perfect you may or may not look and it has so much more to do with the glow that comes from within when you feel pure confidence and love.

I wrote a song about her butterfly philosophy and both of my girls sing it at the top of their lungs:

“You were never meant to be anyone else

You were truly made to fly

And you don’t need a cape if you’re already a butterfly.”

I pray every night that they never forget those words.

I don’t know about you, but the years and the scrapes and dents that happen in life blur that vision for me far too much. I can’t remember sometimes that I have wings. Colorful wings unlike anyone else’s in the world. There are things that only I can say or do. So I should do them confidently and with love.

I used to be the host of a radio show, and I got to interview one of my favorite songwriters, Beth Nielsen Chapman. She said something so profound. I have to paraphrase because I don’t have the exact quote now. But she pointed out that no one else has ever seen the world from the point of view that originates exactly behind your eyes. Even though we all see a lot of the same things, we each have a story that only we can tell in our own way. As a songwriter that’s very exciting to me. But it’s also exciting to me as a liver of life in general. No mom will ever be like me. No wife will ever be like me. No random lady in a castle or in a cul-de-sac will ever be exactly the same as me. What amazing, unique thing can I do today? As cheesy as it sounds, maybe Prince has something there. Maybe when you feel a little weak in the knees, it’s quite important to remember, “Nothing compares 2 U.” (P.S. I totally know that the song is actually a depressing but super catchy song about getting your heart smashed. But we’ll talk about that another day. Or not. Just let me imagine Sinead’s voice screeching it to me as a super awesome compliment, written by Prince. There, all fixed.)

I could not find Him until I was alone.

A few weeks ago I drove by myself down to St. George to do a performance at, of all things, a marriage convention.  I’m fully aware that I have only been married for about 8 years, and all of it has been good, so I probably didn’t have many useful insights about how to save a marriage. I tried to shut up and sing as best as I could, since my usual long-windedness wouldn’t have served me well in this case.  But all of that is a topic for another day.  Or not. Anyway, as much fun as it was to go perform for some really great people, I think my favorite part of that trip was the drive.

I had actually been dreading the drive. Since Joe and I have been together, most of the long drives I’ve been on have been with him, and he’s usually the one behind the wheel. He’s my favorite traveling companion in all the world. And these days, more often than not, in between interesting bits of our conversation, I am also trying to shovel treats into the mouths of my daughters in the back seat so that we can bribe them to hang in there for a few more miles. As chaotic as all of that sounds, I was feeling a little lonely and a little timid about driving by myself this time around.

I packed up my snacks and made sure I brought my ipod with all my favorite playlists of my favorite artists, and I cranked up the music and headed south. Suddenly I realized that I could not think of the last time I had spent a solid three and a half hours alone. I discovered that I actuallyenjoyed my own company. And then the songs I was hearing started to show me things. At first they took me back in time to places and people who touched the deepest places in my heart. Luckily I was driving safely enough that I didn’t do anything that would have caused my whole life to flash before my eyes. But I had almost that sort of experience as I drove. As I thought about all of these memories in hindsight, I started to feel like I was on a tall mountain looking down at where I had been. I saw the beauty in the path I had taken. I saw the times I had fallen down, but I also saw the ways I had dusted myself off and kept going. When I looked at things this way, even the sad memories were happy when I realized where they had ultimately led me so far. All of this also made me look forward and see how much there was left of that mountain of my life for me to climb. At least I hoped so, because in the midst of all these personal memories, the sounds of the music and the voice of my heart, I heard another voice, too. A still, small voice, comforting me and congratulating me, but also warning me and encouraging me to do better at some things. That voice whispered to me about each of the people I love and tried to tell me things I needed to do better at giving them. I felt peaceful, but slightly anxious to get to work at those things. I looked forward to the time I could walk through my door again and hold my loved ones tightly. That quiet voice also pointed out other personal ways I could work harder at being who I am meant to be.

Alone time for me has often been combined with driving.

When I was in college, sometimes when I needed to sort things out, I’d go for a drive in my little blue 1970 Volkswagon beetle. I couldn’t go too far, because I didn’t want to get stranded, (it wasn’t the most reliable vehicle), but that gem of a car seemed at times to be my own little sacred place.

A few years later, I was driving home from singing at a girls’ camp and I was a little lost. I was alone on the road and I was flipping through the radio stations to find some music to make me feel less uneasy. But instead I found a crackly station that was trying to broadcast the BBC news. I felt even farther from home; so far that I almost wondered if I could turn the dial a tiny bit more, and maybe pick up a frequency that would broadcast God’s voice. And hopefully that voice could reassure me that I was going the right way.

Fast forward a little more. A few months after Joe and I were married, I was having a blue day, really for no reason. But I just couldn’t shake it. Joe very wisely took me on a drive through a canyon with beautiful autumn leaves that showered all over the road and flew past us as we drove.  My mind opened up and I started thinking of song ideas. We were quiet as we drove, and I wrote things down in my notebook. I wasn’t blue anymore.

I’ve repeated that form of therapy a few times since then. Sometimes with Joe, and other times all by myself. (The writing part has to wait when I do it alone.) Something about the nature and the driving and the quiet opens up my heart and lets both God and creativity in.

Remembering those powerful experiences makes me want to try harder to spend a little mini moment each day when I can be alone. It’s not always easy to carve that moment out, but I want to budget my time more wisely so I can make it happen somehow.

I looked for Him in the fire. He wasn’t in the fire.

I looked for Him in the windstorm, but He was not there.

I looked for Him in the lofty words of the men on the mighty thrones

But I could not find Him until I was alone.

From time to time I get requests from people to reveal the meaning of one of my songs, or to tell about what made me want to write it. So every now and then I will pick a song to talk about on this blog. Today’s entry was mostly about Still Small Voice with a little hint of Prayers in a Car.  And maybe if I do a good job of inviting both the Still Small Voice and the muse to come and pay me a visit, perhaps I will eventually have even more songs to tell you about as time goes by. And if you think of a song of mine you’d like to know more about, let me know and I’ll move it up on my list.

Sad Songs Say So Much

Yeah, I am a child of the 80′s. And as much as I love super crunchy acoustic folk music, I have to admit that every once in a while I like a good ol’ pop song, like the one referenced in the title of this blog. I don’t care what you think of me. I’ll bet if I had the chance to look at your ipod, there would be some top secret stuff on there. So, with that being said, no matter what style we’re talking about, there is one type of song that exists in most every genre that I love with a deep and special place in my heart. The sad song.

You might be wondering what trial I am going through in my life, and why I am writing this post about sad music. Actually, I’ve never been happier in my life. I have a ridiculously happy marriage. My music life is currently making me feel very happy and fulfilled. There are many other things that are going really great. But I am still listening to, loving, and even writing sad songs.

For some strange reason, writing a sad song is really fun for me. I love the drama and the built-in conflict that automatically adds passion to a song. Passion that rarely runs the risk of being sickeningly sweet, because in the end, the hero doesn’t get the girl/guy. And most of us know how that feels.

That brings me to why I think sad songs are actually really important. I am not sure how many other people there are out there like me in this respect, (there must be a bunch of us, since sad songs are so popular,) but when I feel sad, there’s a pretty important amount of time right off the top, when I really don’t want to hear music that’s meant to cheer me up. Happy songs actually feel like a big punch in the nose during that phase. I don’t want to immediately hear songs about how I SHOULD feel. I really want to hear songs that sound like the way I DO feel. It touches a place in  my heart that makes me realize that I’m not the only one in the world who has ever felt that way. Some random friend in the radio knows all about it.

One of my favorite scriptures of all time is John 11:35. Jesus wept. He didn’t make it to the sick bed in time to heal a good friend. When his other friends were mourning, he didn’t tell them they should be glad the guy was in a better place. He didn’t even say, “Just hold on a minute, I’ll fix it.” He just cried with them, because he knew that’s what they needed most at that very moment. I think that’s what I feel like sad songs do for me. They cry with me.

Back in my single days I can think of many songs and albums that were like a warm blanket in that way. At the top of my list is Alison Krauss’ “Forget About It”. I think I listened to that album on repeat for about 24 hours a day (I was so dented that I could hardly sleep) for a couple of weeks straight, after a bad heartbreak. Another time I read an email at work that had some relationship-killing news about an on and off situation that was finally off for good. When I got in the car to drive home in the rain, Faith Hill was singing “Let Me Let Go” (don’t judge me, we went over this at the beginning), and I cried big tears that I hadn’t been able to find for months. I think I needed that.

As a radio host, a few years back I had the amazing opportunity to interview Beth Nielsen Chapman, one of my songwriting idols. I was excited to ask her about what I consider her masterpiece, an album called “Sand and Water”. She wrote the whole thing throughout the experience of learning her husband had cancer, standing by him while he fought it, and holding him as he died. All five of Elizabeth Kubler Ross’ stages of grief are represented in those songs in a very personal and heartbreaking way. Beth Nielsen Chapman had amazing stories to tell from the letters that poured in from people who were truly healed by that music. And she was just writing what she knew.

Writing a sad song is kind of a magical thing for the writer.  I love the idea that you can take the most hopeless, rotten day and as a songwriter you can actually make it useful to you on some creative level. It’s really healing.

Sad songs are not the only useful songs, or even the only type of songs that I like to write. I’m the same person who wrote the song, “Believe”, after all. There’s a song that’s bound to give you a black eye on a day you were hoping to be blue.

In my teenage years, my room was a haven of peace for me, and music played a huge role in that. I played a lot of religious music in there, and it was always able to wash away any turmoil that might have existed in my life at the time, right when I walked in the door.

I love playing the ukulele that I bought a couple of months ago. I challenge anyone to feel sad while playing one!!

And as time goes by and life continually gets sweeter, my little songwriting heart is finally learning  how to try and write a great, happy, sweet love song that won’t even make you want to eat a salt and vinegar potato chip at the end. Still working on it.

In the coming months I hope to show you examples of all this stuff. I’ve had such a blast writing for a project I will tell you more about very soon.

Until then, why don’t you tune in and turn them on.

From the ashes.

So, I don’t mean to get all Kip Dynamite on you, but I really love technology. And I admit that I’ve never been the best at it. But it really is true that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. That’s a pretty loaded statement in my case this week. Just a couple of days ago, our beloved family computer crashed. We saw it coming. Every day we casually talked about how maybe we should back some things up. It was acting, for lack of a real technical term, weird.

It would have been awesome if, on the morning that I logged on to the computer for the very last time, the Spirit would have prompted me to immediately back everything up, before the screen froze, before I restarted it, before I looked in horror at the flashing question mark that was on my screen. It would have been totally awesome if that would have happened. But when I brought that up to Joe today, he reminded me that we had been “prompted” by many warning signs for several months. That’s an object lesson for another day.

So we’re doing all the things right now that people in our situation do. We have a list of people and companies we plan to call for help as each attempt to retrieve data fails. We’re taking it to experts, trying crazy experiments, and buying bulletproof backup systems for our immediate computer-using future.

The other thing that’s happening is that we’re repeatedly being reminded of the things we no longer have. We keep reaching for things that are no longer there. Trying to send attachments that no longer faithfully appear on the screen. We’re missing things. Some of our favorite mp3′s. Rough demos. Tax information. Baby pictures. We have a lot of baby pictures of Madeline on the laptop, but all of Syd’s pictures were on this main desktop computer. It’s almost like our house burned down.

As I was sulking about it, feeling really depressed, Joe reminded me of something important. “We don’t have baby pictures of Sydney anymore,” he said, “but we still have her.”  That really hit me to the core. I will always have very vivid pictures in my mind of what it was like when she was a baby. I remember things that were never photographed by anyone. No one can take those memories and feelings away from me. I still mourn for those specific images that once scrolled across our computer screen every day while we worked. But I don’t need them to prove that Sydney was once a baby.

I started to think about all the things that matter in my life. The building where Joe proposed to me has been torn down. But it still happened. I don’t think the magnificent Salt Lake Temple will burn down any time soon, but even if it did, we still would have had that beautiful wedding day.  All the papers and pictures and documents that proved that day happened could burst into flames and disappear, but it wouldn’t change the fact that we belong to each other. The world as we know it could crumble to dust and that would still be true.

All of this made me think of other things that I believe in, without having tangible, certified proof.

Once I write a song, it exists forever. Even if all the recordings and chord charts disintegrate. Even if no one sings it. It still happened. Even if it’s a pretty dumb song.

I know God exists, and I’m extremely grateful that He returns that favor. Even when I act pretty clueless, and don’t listen carefully enough.

So now, as we try all the long shot ideas, we also face reality and re-enter receipts. We take new pictures. We make new recordings. Because beautiful and important things keep happening every day. Our computer has a newer, faster, bigger, emptier, more heartless hard drive. It makes me feel a little sick inside right now when I turn the computer on, but I still love and appreciate it and use it. I still love technology. But I’m reminded that the reason I love it so much is because it helps me document things that I love much more than technology. It helps me connect with people who aren’t going to “crash” on me. At the end of the day all the technology could melt into a puddle of moosh and I’d still be a lucky girl.

If you’re thinking that some piece of this could make a good song, I’ve thought about that, too. It’s already half way written. On paper.

Starting again, again.

Hi, friends. Well, here we go. It’s that time of year. You’re thinking about putting the tree away if it’s not done already. And if you’re like me, in the back of your mind you have this list hanging over your head. New Year’s resolutions. The ones from last year that you didn’t get done, plus new ones. Here’s what I like to do. I like to pretend that all of them are new. Like the thought never even crossed my mind to go running every day last year. It’s just a cool new idea. Being a better and more fun mom? Never even considered it till today. Keeping better financial records so that doing taxes isn’t a nightmare? What a great idea! It takes away some of the negative feelings and guilt when you treat it like a fresh, new idea.

It’s all part of my extra special New Year’s resolution this year to be more energy efficient. Now ultra conservative friends and fans, don’t throw your computers out the window just yet, let me tell you just what I mean. (not that wind and solar power are bad ideas. But we won’t get into that here.) Basically, I’ve noticed that I waste a lot of emotional energy on being negative. I’d like to harness that energy and use it to create more hope and happiness in my life. Were you hoping for a painfully personal example? Here goes.

A while ago, I was randomly starting to get lots of congratulations from people on my pregnancy.  This would have been super sweet if I were actually pregnant! Grr. I just still hadn’t lost all the weight from the last pregnancy. And, admittedly, my youngest was over a year old at the time I was getting these comments. I started collecting a list of snarky comments I would say back to those people if I ever became brave/mean enough. And some of them made me laugh for a minute, but eventually made me feel even more rotten than I did before. I finally came up with the groundbreaking idea of trying to drop a few pounds. I ended up losing about 20 pounds. It took quite a while because I went with a groundbreaking plan called “diet and exercise”. It took energy and time. So much that I didn’t really have time or energy left to wallow in self pity quite so much. Energy efficient! The other moral of this story? Never ask a woman when her baby is due. I mean never. Not ever. Unless you’d feel just as comfortable saying the words, “Wow, you look so gigantic that a whole extra human being could be living in your stomach.” Or unless you have just that very moment heard the woman say something like, “Wow, the baby that is currently inside my belly just kicked me in the ribs.”

Moving on though, have I gained back five pounds? Yeah. Could I still stand to lose ten more? I think so. Am I going to keep asking myself questions and immediately answering them? Maybe. But my point is that I feel great anyway in spite of the fact that I’m not done. Because I’m working on it. And I have some extra sympathy and understanding for all the other people out there currently fighting the same type of battle. Basically I feel a lot less snarky and a lot more willing to give people the benefit of the doubt, even when they put their foot in their mouth. Because I’ve never done that before, right? Don’t answer that.

Anyway, I’m hoping to expand the energy efficient idea this year. It takes energy to look all over the house for things. Why not use the same amount of energy to be more organized?

Songwriting with a huge deadline is stressful. Deadlines that come up at the very last minute can’t even be helped. But what if I worked a little more on being creative each day? Maybe the on-demand writing would work out better.

Jealous? Angry? Hurt? Why not use that energy to let it go, move on, forgive.

Worrying sucks the most energy out of my life of all. What if I turned that worry into optimism? It could utterly change my little corner of the world.

What if I fail at all of these things? It takes energy to beat myself up about it. Why don’t I just start again?

My challenge to myself and to you is to notice the times when negative energy is being spent, and transform its power into creating progress, happiness, and hope. It takes some effort to think that way, but I’m up for it.

Maybe words I never said are only things that I haven’t told you yet.

Maybe love that I have missed is only love that hasn’t touched me yet.

Maybe hope I’ve never had is only faith that I haven’t shown you yet.

Maybe dreams that never happened are only miracles that haven’t happened yet!

Happy New Year.

The gift of a broken heart

As the snow heaps and heaps down, I have a carol in my head. “In the Bleak Midwinter”. I’ve never been a big fan of snow, and as pretty as it is as it heaps down, right now all I can think about is how I’m going to get through it all to get to the post office. Bleak. But the more I think about that carol, I realize what a beautiful message it has. The beauty that comes this time of year out of all this cold. I especially love this verse:

What can I give him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would give a lamb

If I were a wise man, I would do my part

Yet what can I give him? Give my heart.

We often hear that the greatest gift we can give Jesus is the gift of our broken heart. Broken in a few different ways. First of all, broken like a once wild horse. Tamed to do His will. He has given us every blessing we hold dear in this life and the only gift we can give in return that is truly ours to give, is our will and our love.

Second of all, broken when we make mistakes. When we give him our broken, sorry heart, he can make us clean, which he longs to do.

Third of all, broken when we’re hurt, jealous, or angry. Sometimes I think of a broken heart as being temporarily hindered from working at it’s full potential. Jesus wants to help us fix that. He wants to take the responsibility for dealing with the one who has caused us hurt, so that we can be free to go on living and loving as we should, and ultimately be happier for it.

There may be other types of broken hearts, but the last one that comes to my mind is the kind we think about most often. When we’re just sad. Heartbroken. Sometimes we don’t realize we can give this type of broken heart to Jesus. But he wants it. He wants to comfort us and to heal us. And as the years go by, I’m beginning to think that a broken heart is actually an amazing gift. Not just our gift to Jesus, but one of God’s great gifts to us. One of the reasons we dwell on this earth in the first place. To feel and to learn.

Now let me be clear. I’ve never wished for a broken heart. I can’t think of one time when I have. But here are a couple of times in my life when a broken heart has been a gift.

When my parents divorced, it truly broke my heart. I may never fully believe that it was meant to be, and healing from it is a lifelong process. But I have learned so much about Jesus in the process. Most of that is very personal. On the most basic level, I feel like having a broken heart has opened my heart up a little more. When people I love are going through the same kind of thing, I have a sliver of understanding I wouldn’t have had before. Enough that I can at least cry with them a little. And isn’t that what Jesus did with his friends sometimes? Hopefully I can also offer some hope in the distance, since it’s been about 20 years now and I consider myself to be a very happy person who even believes in love.

That leads me to an example that may seem a little more trivial. When I was in college, I got my heart broken. It sounds terribly melodramatic, but I truly wondered if I would ever recover. Time went by. And my heart got broken again by someone else. The cruelty of it all!! How unfair it was to love so deeply, twice, and have both things fall apart. But just as I had that thought one day, I realized something. Wait a minute. Twice? This meant that I did indeed love again! The fact that my heart could be broken so badly, twice, meant that I had more than one chance for true love. I had loved twice, and so couldn’t it be possible that I could love at least one more time? Knowing this really opened my heart and ultimately lead me to the very truest love of my life, and the realization of my fondest dream, to have a happy family.  Truly happy. I know it sounds cliche. But it’s really the biggest dream I’ve ever had. And I have some pretty big dreams.

I still beg God every day to keep bad things from happening to me and the people I love. But maybe these kinds of things are a little bit of why I’m so fascinated by broken hearts. Some of my favorite songs I’ve written are about hearts being broken. Sad love songs like “Only the Mountains Know”. Or sad but hopeful songs like “Family Tree”.  And at this time of year, “Gifts”. Here is the last verse:

I told Him it was broken, but it was all that I had;

And He said that it was just what he wanted, and somehow I believed what He said;

And it wasn’t gold or frankincense like they gave him from the start.

It was just my heart, it was just my heart.

In all the gift giving we do at this time of year, let us remember to give Jesus our hearts, and also to recognize the beauty in these winter storms, and realize that maybe sometimes the storm itself is indeed a gift.

Alone in the dark.

About nine or ten years ago, I went to a concert alone. It was Alison Krauss and Union Station, playing at Kingsbury Hall on U of U campus. It was the first time I had ever done such a thing. I heard somewhere that they were coming and instantly knew that my heart and soul just desperately needed to be at that show. At first I thought about who should go with me. None of my friends at the time were fans of her and wouldn’t even take a ticket if I bought it for them. So I thought about getting a date. I thought of the two or three guys I knew who might say yes if I asked. But I also knew I didn’t want to worry about some dumb guy all night who wouldn’t even really want to be there, or even necessarily want to be with me.  By that point in my life I had learned what a bad idea it is to ask a guy on a date. But that’s a topic for another day.

I thought about it for a day or two, and then I just decided to break down and go to the show alone. I bought myself a ticket and became one of those great people who fill in the gaps in the seating that come between all the couples. It felt weird to drive to the venue alone, present my single ticket to the gate keeper, and find my lonely little seat. But the loneliness ended when the music began. The show was amazing. At one point I loved it so much that tears ran down my face. I turned to an old man sitting next to me and we smiled at each other and said, almost in unison, “Isn’t this amazing?!” I went home from that show with a smile that lasted at least a week. I was so glad I went.

I remembered that show as I was getting in my car last night. Why? Because last night I did something I have not done since that Alison Krauss concert. Last night I went to a concert alone.  I’d been dying to see a band I truly adore, called The Weepies. I was overjoyed to discover they were coming to Salt Lake City, then realized it was on a night when Joe would be working out of town. But I just couldn’t pass it up. I tried to find another friend who’d want to go with me, but the stars never aligned. So I decided to go alone.

These days it takes a little more work for me to go anywhere alone. I hired my niece to come and babysit my girls. I wrote down instructions for her on how to use all the TV remotes, and how to tuck my girls in for the night. And then I got in the car. Once I stopped worrying about my kids, I had a different breed of butterflies in my heart.  I had feelings that took me back in time to a lonelier and more independent time. I got out of my car and waited in line outside the venue, waiting for the house to open. I stood as tall as I could between all the people on dates. Some people looked excited to be there, and some people looked awkward around each other, probably not thinking about the show at all.  I secretly smiled at all the feigned interest in forced conversations, and I remembered all the reasons why there are times when you might as well go to a concert alone.

This evening was a little different than the Alison Krauss concert because when I walked in, to my surprise I discovered I had friends there who even were kind enough to save me a seat. When the lights went down it was a lot of fun that they were there, but I also was grateful that I was good enough friends with myself to still be determined enough to do things I love to do, even if those things had to be done alone sometimes. The show was so amazing and my heart was so full and happy all night.

When the show was over I took pictures of the stage setup and texted them to Joe, since I know he loves to see those kinds of things. And when I was alone again outside the venue, I was dying to call him and tell him all about my night. I’m immeasurably grateful that I’m not a lone traveler in this world. But maybe the time I do have to spend alone helps me remember important things about who I am and what I love.

There’s one more thing that happens to me when I see a show as amazing as the one I saw last night. It makes me want to keep striving as a musician to put on a show for you that will be worth the babysitter you had to call, or the guts it took you to go alone, or even the guts it took you to ask someone out. I want you to feel that sparkly warmth when you leave the venue, whether it’s a living room or a big concert hall. I thank anyone reading this who has witnessed the work in progress that this endeavor has been so far. Thank you for taking a chance on me. May I make music for you that will never leave you feeling alone in the dark. Unless you want to be.

Day job.

Today is September 11th. On this day I always get a vivid memory of the “day job” I had for the longest amount of time, and what was probably my longest day at that job. I used to take reservations for Southwest Airlines. A lot of that day involved me telling people that what they saw on TV was real. In the most sensitive way possible we tried to help people through their shock and still tell them we couldn’t get them anywhere, and had no idea when we would be able to. We gave out the phone number for Greyhound.  It was pretty wild. I could talk about September 11th for days. But this is not a blog about terrorists or patriotism, even though I think a lot about those things. I think there are people who are better at writing about those things. Today I’m just writing about doing your job no matter how wild of a day you’re having. And maybe it is about freedom. Freedom to be who you are in your deepest heart, no matter what your job is.

I never really liked that job. I absolutely do not look down on anyone who I knew back then who still works for Southwest or any airline. In a lot of ways it’s a wonderful job. The flight benefits are really great. The people at work are nice. I made good friends. Many people there loved it, and magnified it into a magical responsibility. It just wasn’t my dream. Back then I felt like it was keeping me from being creative. All I did was ask and answer the same questions all day long, like a robot. When I got home, I desperately wrote songs. I did it to keep my brain alive. I did it to feel like a human. I wrote to prove to myself that I still could. I wrote to prove that I was not just employee number eight-hundred and something, who could be replaced in less than a minute by someone new.  Now that I look back, I realize that having that job was actually a real driving force in my creativity because of that desperation, and that it was actually one of the most productive songwriting times of my life.

While I was still working there, I was invited to go on tour with a brand new inspirational boy band called “Jericho Road”. I looked at the tour schedule and ultimately realized I would never be able to find people to pick up that many shifts. I was faced with a decision. If I did not go on that tour, I would be making a decision to be an airline employee, not a real, working musician. That terrified me more than not having a job when the tour was over. So I quit. My last day was uneventful. After working there for over five years, when I handed over my ID card, the person behind the desk just said, “Okay, thanks.” Most people didn’t miss me. But it was a big day for me.

People reading this will laugh that the Jericho Road tour was such a turning point for me. I traveled and performed with a band of really great guys who played fun, poppy music that was nothing like mine. None of the people who came to those shows even liked what I did. But it changed my life forever. First of all, it was the beginning of my day job becoming music. That was so exciting to me. I’ve never become rich from that, but it’s still something that thrills me.  Second of all, the sound guy on that tour was Joe Anderson. A really cute guy. We ended up getting married. Eventually this provided me with my second really amazing day job, being a mom.  Really it’s the most magical job of all. (Actually, both of these jobs are day AND night jobs! But that’s another story.)

It’s tricky sometimes, but I’m grateful for a life and an amazing support system that somehow makes it possible for me to keep both day jobs. I know it’s not that way for everyone, and I know I’m blessed. And certainly there are times when I have to put music on the back burner. But it’s always in my heart and in my life somehow. And in a way, each job helps me with the other.  Even though I can’t really work on songwriting sometimes until the kids are asleep, the things that happen in our lives give me lots of wonderful new ideas. And even though playing music sometimes makes it necessary for me to send the girls to a friend’s house for a few hours, (I do try to be careful about that) maybe someday they’ll realize that their mom had a dream, and that they, too can have dreams of their own. I am still working hard at both jobs. There are some pretty wild days. I still have a whole lot to do at both. And I am not quitting anytime soon.

What does this have to do with anyone besides me? Maybe this. If you don’t like your job, realize that the job isn’t you. When you get home, whether it’s at 5 p.m. or 2 a.m., you can come home. Take a few moments to close your eyes and remember who you really are. Create something. Dream a dream. Make time outside of work to be with people who love the real you. Maybe it will even make you better at the job you don’t necessarily love.  And if you do love your day job, consider yourself very blessed.