Oh Taste & See (Hope Restored)

It's been a very long time since I last posted a blog entry. I do, however, have a good reason. Since my last post, God had taken me through the deepest, darkest, lowest place I've ever been in my entire life. Scripture talks about these places as being metaphorical Valleys. Like the "valley of the shadow of death." Well friends, I was in the very shadow of death. Although I had not lost anyone, nor had any horrible circumstance plagued my life, I felt a more intense, gaping void of darkness within me than I had ever thought possible. Just for the sake of recognizable nomenclature, we'll call it depression. It took over. It left me and my family desolate. It was deep. And what's worse is that I had no idea where it come from, how it got there, or when it would leave. The gnashing pit in my stomach that was never relieved, the hours spent staring at the floor with my distraught widow crying next to me, the never-ending thought of the extension cord on the second story of the building in which I lived.

It. Was. Horrible.

Many of you prayed for me. Thank you. Honestly, I might not have made it without you... not to be overly melodramatic, I was just so confused and in so much pain. But that depression is far from my point. My point is that:

God freed me.

He set me free. One day, He literally decided that it had been enough and the 6 of us prayed in the dirt, late that February night.... and He set me free. Just as quickly as it had come, it left. It's an amazing story and if you'd like to hear it, I will joyfully share it with you in person (it's a little too special to post on a blog). Now I'm not here to make some kind of theological statement about Christians who can become demon-possessed. I'm not making a statement like that because I just have no earthly understanding of what happened to me. Although I'm certain that my depression was completely demonic, I have no idea why it happened. But I can tell you this: it happened. And I can also tell you this: God is sovereign (whatever that means). And I can tell you this: I'm so glad He set me free.

I know Jesus more now than I did last year, and if I know anything about Him it's that, through it all, He was there. Yesterday morning as we were spending time together, He told me that He wanted me to Taste & See His goodness the way that David talked about it in Psalms. Me and Allie were listening to the album "Give Up" by the Postal Service the other day and I remembered the first time I had ever heard that album. It came out when I was 13 years old and I remember one night listening to my iPod while I was in bed. "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight" was the first song I heard and I remember it vividly.

I took it in like I was drinking a cup of coffee. I connected with it as if I were ingesting it. The lyrics, the drum machine, the synths, and Ben Gibbard's voice were all like a mixture of flavors that were so easy to swallow. I tasted it and it was amazing. I remember feeling the same way about "Sigh No More" by Mumford and Sons. It was like the first time I ever tasted Old Rasputin, or Gelato. Or like the time Russ brought his Chemex to the church where I was working and made me some fresh roasted Ethiopian Harrar by Kuma coffee. Or the time I had a cortado from VB's that tasted like watermelon, or the Burundi Coffee from Seeds that was like chocolate covered blueberries... I connected. I tasted it. I felt it.

That's like Jesus! We can connect with Him that way!! Except He's like way better than a cup of coffee.... It actually makes the cups of coffee better! We can live in the unbelievable gifts He gives us as we're connected to Him. He loves that.

So, in early February I came out of the most miserable season of my entire life, which ushered me into the hands-down, most beautiful season of my entire life. Literally, the next day and every day after became song after song of praise. Countless moments of thanksgiving. Many tears of joy that the darkness was gone and was replaced with such marvelous light. Every morning in my journal several times: "... thank you, thank you, thank you."

I don't know why it happened. It didn't fit in with my well packaged theology. I still don't know what I would say to myself 3 months ago, if given the chance. But I know, somehow, it was so I could taste the goodness of my God. It was my paradox road to Joy. My avenue of understanding. It cracked the door of the tiny shed I called Holy Spirit, and led me by the hand into a forrest of greenery. I still don't get it. I still can't answer the question Austin asked me last summer: "If God is good, why does all this shit happen in the world?," but I promise He is. There is pain, and God is good. Somehow they're connected. Somehow, our pain is intrinsically linked to experiencing that very goodness of God. I don't know that because I read a book by John Piper, I know that because I was buried in sadness and covered in pain, yet through it all, He was there and He was good.

This song pissed me off so bad during my depression... yet God used it powerfully to bring me through it.

At the time, it wasn't well with my soul, but it would be. He held me. He knew me.

In the midst of my sorrow, the one word my dad kept hearing for me was hope. Almost every time he saw me, he would remind me. Pretty cool that we live in a building called Hope Restored. The darkness that was around me was, in fact, directly linked to the building itself, so it was more than ironic foreshadowing that wrote the end of that story. My prayer is that my journey will serve to bring hope to others that are hopeless, because I sure was. I was able to write about 6 songs in the middle of depression and on the brink of delivery, so maybe one of these days God will allow me to record an album for those like me.

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Listen. There will be pain, but God's goodness is not contesting against it to see who will win. God's goodness is the painting in which it is portrayed. Pain is not a sigh of failure from the breath of God, it is a minor chord in the crescendo of God's plan. The key will resolve, and it will be the most beautiful piece of art we've ever experienced. We will devour the goodness of God in our pain like a starving man at a feast. Like a crying baby calmed by its mother. Like the whole of creation singing praises in the Goodness of our God!

Breathe Him in. Taste Him. He is good.  

-Trey

ps. We also had a kid:

pps. And you should really listen to this song:

Thanks

(This is an excerpt from our upcoming zine, which will include several poems, drawings, painting, woodcuts, and short stories compiled by Commoner as a literary companion to our album!)

I had a friend who kept a notebook she coined her “Happy list.” She’d write in numeric order anything she could think of that brought her joy. The items in her Happy List weren’t necessarily listed in order of importance or happiness level, but just as she experienced them or as they came to mind. I eventually started my own Happy List. #215: Morning Fog.

As time went on, I realized that these items in my list were so much more than autonomous fragments with the association of temporary happiness. #37: The First Sip of Coffee. These were pieces of a unified portrait of joy, crafted by a glorious Creator. This Creator, who knit me together as a tapestry and reached into the vacuum of my chest to pump-start my spirit, knows every single corner of my life. He knew the things on this list before they were written and He knows the ones that won’t be written for years. #93: The Crunch of Leaves. He made me so that these things would bring me the joy that bids me record every note. This realization turned my happy list into a register of Thanks, and that became much more important. #147: Bubble Wrap

So I went and bought a Moleskine® notebook that would fit neatly into my back pocket, and a Micron® pen that I could carry on me at all times. This record of thanksgiving must not be something I do, but someone I am. It is to be a part of me, and a part of my life. #224: Pomegranate. I carry it with me everywhere to combat the poison of entitlement with joy and gratitude, and it is having a profound effect on my life. When thanksgiving becomes a language that we speak, rather than a ritual that we infrequently practice, we begin to wear it. It becomes a lense through which we see the world and in doing so the world becomes infinitely more beautiful. #94 Watercolored Sunsets. Introspection is a disease that leaves us empty, but when we fix our eyes outwardly upon the joy that is set before us, our short life on earth becomes a theater of God. Each twist and turn on our journey calls us to notice the details, for it is in the details that we see God’s character. #126: Folk Music. It’s the first day of spring, when you look out upon the dreary, snow covered ground but then hear a bird singing from atop your chimney. It’s when you find the solitude within the chaos. #12 Coffee Shops. Friends, don’t miss out on what’s in store for you.

And when the sadness seems a sickness endlessly, I hope you find your bird in the chimney.

I Don't Know What to Do, But My Eyes Are On You (Oh God, Where Are You Now? [In Pickerel Lake? Pigeon? Marquette? Mackinaw? North Judson?])

As something of a disclaimer, I should mention that I'm about to be honest about my life

One of the saddest parts of our western culture is our societal inability to be vulnerably honest, especially on the internet. If anything, social media is to be the place where everyone sees only your good side, right? You only post photos of you having fun or doing something you want everyone else to see you doing. Myself included! I have yet to post a photo of my acne, or videos of my fights with Allie, or a status update of my horrible thoughts. I mean, it makes sense. One of the most basic human needs is to be loved, but unfortunately Facebook has turned that into being "liked," or even tolerated! Real love is so different, and I certainly don't know what it looks like completely, but I have decided that a good start is to be honest. And 90% of the time, being honest means being vulnerable no matter the consequence. If I'm being honest for a desired reaction, I'm not really being honest, am I? Real honesty and vulnerability means letting people see the gross and undesirable parts of us, so they can know that they don't have to do this alone. I'm not alone. We're not alone. You're not alone.

I was a happy kid. In college, I had a thousand friends because I was just so darn happy all of the time. That's why I never saw it coming. It really started as soon as I graduated, but it was about a year later before it fully took over. I thought it was a food allergy. I cut out gluten, sugar, dairy, even even coffee. Sometimes, it seemed to work for a day or two but then it would come back like a hurricane. I called it "The Great Weariness," then "The Terrible Sadness," although words never really worked for relaying how I felt. By themselves, words never do. I finally landed on the only word that seemed to fit. I knew others who struggled with a similar "condition" who would use this word, but it was so hard for me to admit. It was almost as if I had been in denial and the word itself brought the acceptance of the thing which I so hated and feared.

It comes and goes in tidal waves, but a few weeks ago, in one of the lowest times of my entire life (without any circumstantial rational, mind you), I barely made it from my bed to the computer to attempt a description. The following was written in that time:

Depression is aptly named.

What shall we call the feeling of an unimaginable weight that is lurking at every turn to crush us into something that is hardly recognizable? A smooth matrix of sand interrupted by an incredible object, leaving only the impression of the weight in what was before. Smoothness gone, left only with a depression.

It's like a sickness. A tumor in my body. I can even feel it as such. A sharp pain that nearly brings me to my knees yet with a dullness that leaves me with no feeling at all. A centralized physiological location of pain... sort of behind my stomach, but much deeper in my body. Even temporary moments of pleasure are impossible to bear for the knowledge that it won't last. It's as if the darkness in itself is burning it's way to all the lit parts of my body to devour each source.

And yet, the worst part is that God is somehow good. This world is somehow beautiful, but all i know is unimaginable pain. In these moments, the only thing that even comes close is poetry. Only songs can somehow capture what I "feel." Beauty is in the pain, but even that is a maddening concept solely for art.

"Oh God, where are you now? Oh Lord, say somehow"

You're all i have, but why does it feel like i have nothing? I'm imploding.

"The devil is hard on my face again. The world is a hundred to one again."

These psalms of sickness speak to God's heart. I know He wants me, I know He wants to rescue me, sometimes this world just feels like ....

"Oh God, hold me now. Oh God, touch me now."


The thing is... I know many can relate. I think the enemy's primary goal in his use of depression is to make us feel like we're completely alone. I think there's power in knowing that he's a liar.

So, then in my darkness I got up from my desk and and God gave me Psalm 42:

As a deer pants for flowing streams,

so pants my soul for you, O God.

2  My soul thirsts for God,

for the living God.

When shall I come and appear before God?

3  My tears have been my food

day and night,

while they say to me all the day long,

“Where is your God?”

4  These things I remember,

as I pour out my soul:

how I would go with the throng

and lead them in procession to the house of God

with glad shouts and songs of praise,

a multitude keeping festival.

5  Why are you cast down, O my soul,

and why are you in turmoil within me?

Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,

my salvation 6 and my God.

David is not singing a cute little woodland melody, this is a tear-stained dirge of raw agony! In my darkest, God saw what I felt and wrote, then immediately gave me that to read. David sat at his desk 3,000 years before I did and poured out his soul in the same way, and God heard Him. God heard me. He was there the whole time, with tears in His eyes, longing for us to see Him through our pain.

I'm not alone. David was not alone. That little psalm of vulnerability made it to our cannon of scripture for a specific purpose. When we accept reality, each moment calls us to answer the most important question that is ever asked: "Is God real, or isn't He?" Because if He's real, then He's real in the pain. If God is real, then He's really with me when I don't feel like it. For us to shrink God so that He can fit inside our constricting box of emotions and feelings, is to replace Him for a God that does not exist. The God that met me on my living room floor and spoke to me with trumpeted clarity, changing the course of my life, is just as present with me in my suicidal depths of agonizing depression.

I wish that I could offer this post as a neat little wrapped up package. I wish I could share all of this as past tense rather than reality. I can tell you that I will be freed of this. I do know that this is spiritual oppression because the enemy doesn't like what God's doing in North Judson. And I am certain that everything I'm going through is because God wants to use me to bring healing for others also. In the chance that you're reading this and going through something similar, know that you're not alone, and that I'm walking with you.


I know this is long, but let me leave you with an amazing story from 2 Chronicles 20. King Jo finds out a massive army is coming to destroy him and his country, so he cried out to the Lord. He says "Oh Lord, I do not know what to do, but my eyes are on You." God answers him and says to go to battle praising him. King Jo and all of Judah go weaponless to battle against an army 3 times their size. They get there and start singing praise and thanksgiving, and the ambush waiting for them mistakes their own army as the enemy. All of the enemies of Judah fight each other until every single man is killed, and not one Jew is touched.

This is a battle, but as Bob Dylan wrote, we fight this battle with God on our side.

we're not alone.

-Trey

We Made a Folk Album, and Jesus is Awesome

Well, as is customary with any of the blogs I've attempted in my life, there will be seasons of inactivity due to the standard excuses of general busyness followed by an obligatory apology to the reader for my inability to regularly continue that which I started. Today there will not be the apology, for I am learning more and more the importance of simply spending my time exactly where the Father wants me to spend it, and although this is certainly done imperfectly, I have also learned not to mourn the things not done (especially be it through obligation).

In our last post, I posed some questions that had been my musings for some time on beauty, art, culture, and coffee, of which I'd love to explore some more, but first I have to tell a story...

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If you were unable to read one of my previous posts entitled "Why We're Making a Folk Album," then that might serve as a proper prequel to this story. I might title this story: "We Made a Folk Album, and Jesus is Awesome." (except that title might give away too much of the plot line... it's a working title for now)

I'm in a folk band and we're called Commoner. It consists of my sister, my two friends, myself, and sometimes a couple other people. We started making music this past Spring at Nate and Mary's house on State street. Out of the blue, Jesus gave me the ability to write folk songs and over the course of about a month we had more than enough for a full album. Shortly after that, I ran into a studio producer in Mississippi who encouraged me to come by the studio and talk about recording. It seemed like a wonderful idea, but the price was a bit out of our budget.. fortunately there's this great thing called Kickstarter. Kickstarter is a website that allows creative projects to be funded online by several different people. Instead of one or a few people giving a lot, it's a lot of people giving a little (although, I've seen more generosity through the funding of this project than i've seen in quite some time).

So we made a snappy little video, put a bunch of graphics together, and recorded a few of our songs in a friends bedroom to get our Kickstarter page set up. It was one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had. To see our close friends and family giving generously, but also to see people I haven't spoken to in years give their hard earned money for our little folk songs was humbling at best! The first day, we raised over 10% of our goal, and I could hardly believe it! I mean, these were high school and college students, and people on missionary support, and families who I knew were struggling financially, and they were giving crazy amounts of money! But it's not like this was an impersonal donation to the salvation army... this was someone literally showing us that they saw the work of God in our lives, that they believed we were listening to His voice, and that they wanted to be a part of it. We didn't ask them to, they didn't have to, they just did! 106 people!!

The first couple of weeks were unbelievable. I would get the little notifications on my phone every time someone would give and it would always make me so happy, no matter the context.. so much so, that it started to control me. I have a bit of an obsessive personality and as the funding deadline drew near, I noticed myself becoming more and more upset about the possibility of us not raising the money. What at first started as an idea held with open hands, became something I tried to control, which in turn started to control me. "Maybe if I do enough on Facebook, or do another video then we'll raise our goal." I was quickly turning my eyes to what I was doing rather than what was being done. And more importantly, I was more interested in raising our money through Kickstarter than than seeking the reality Jesus' life at work in my life in the present. This wasn't a conscious choice of course... I just started to focus my attention way more on the wonderful gifts rather than the glorious Giver. This manifested itself in several long days of menial tasks in an attempt to work this thing into being.

Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh?

This was His idea anyways! He told me to do it, so why did I start to freak out whenever it looked like it wouldn't happen? Because the enemy loves to do whatever he can to get our eyes off of Jesus. Satan knows what works best to get me focused on what I'm doing rather than what He's doing through me. My dad would always say "The thing is not the thing, but the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing" The thing was raising money to make a folk album, but the main thing was following the call of Jesus to the ends of the earth.

But God saves. He always does. And when you're walking with people in community, He'll often use them in the process. My amazing wife and my precious younger sister sat down with me one afternoon, as the exhaustion of working in my own strength was in full swing, and spoke truth into my life. They didn't give me an answer, they didn't tell me what they thought I should do, they just implored me to hear from the Father. They saw this thing start to control me, so they sought freedom for me.

Then God freed me.

Community is so important. Walking with people that know you and see how you spend your time and what consumes your thoughts, is crucial. It's how we were made to live.

But, it's not over!! So God freed me from this imprisonment to my circumstances to the point where I was unattached to whether or not we raised any money at all for our folk album... then He gave it to us anyways! In 1 day, we raised $1,000 which shot us far past what we needed. And!! - We reached our goal on National Coffee Day!! Come on!!! Jesus loves us so much!!

Then we went to Mississippi and made a folk album, but that's another story altogether.



-Trey

ps. the video is a poem I wrote for my church about the importance of community.

On Beauty and Good Coffee (Part 1)

Sometimes, good answers aren't as valuable as good questions. I've been searching for some of those lately.

What is beauty? (Not in a super melodramatic sense... just as it relates to the evangelical Christian artist stuck in between the massively secular, over sexualized world of fine art and the nearly art-illiterate modern church of the American culture)

Why is North Judson, Indiana (or insert your hometown/neighborhood here) the perfect place to reconstruct a cultural ideology of beauty and how it is directly related to the Creator?

Why do we make good coffee?

How can we practice the pleasure of God through enjoying a cup of coffee?

How can we, as the church, use a learned appreciation of life to draw people in to a heart of thanksgiving and praise for our Father, which in turn leads us to an overarching enjoyment of Him?

If you'd like, you can stop reading, close your computer, find a quiet place, and ask the Father to reveal the answers to these questions yourself rather than reading my thoughts. I can promise you that the questions themselves will be better than my answers, but if you'd like to hear my thoughts, you may continue reading.... maybe some of it will be from Jesus (if all of it was from Jesus, it'd be much better!) And due to the magnanimity of the questions, I'll probably split them up into multiple posts.

   On beauty: I recently had a conversation with a friend about the latest Wes Anderson film. Let it be known that I absolutely adore Wes Anderson films and that they have had a very tangible impact on my appreciation of art. In fact, since I was 15 years old, my answer to the occasional favorite movie question has only varied among the films in the Wes Anderson cannon... still to this day Moonrise Kingdom would be my response. However, all but 2 of his movies feature sexually inappropriate scenes that typically involve nudity (enough to earn it an R rating). The aforementioned conversation concerning these films stemmed from a conclusion that my friend had come to which was that nudity and sexual vulgarity will eventually have to be excused in the name of art. 

   The world of fine art is run by a largely Jesus-less society. Granted, the majority of the world in general is run by a largely Jesus-less society, but I'm not sure if we've yet found a method of coping with this reality in the realm of art apart from the disassociation of the church from it. That is to say, how is the church to rightly appreciate and create fine art without compromise of either beauty, design, creativity, originality, or our relationship with Jesus? I know we're getting better, but I think there's still more to come. If we are indeed created in the image of THE CREATOR, are we not living according to our very design when we create? Creativity is at the very core of human existence in light of the fact that our Creator is at the very core of human existence. 

   I don't think that means that we should make more Christian art to take it back as we did in the Middle Ages. If you want to paint a picture of Mary holding baby Jesus with a halo over their heads, go for it, but I don't think that in itself will usher in a modern renaissance of Christian thought concerning art and beauty. In the Middle Ages, Byzantine era, and early Renaissance, the majority of art created involved strictly Biblical content. That was not because the artists creating them were strong Christians, but because the highest paying patron was the Roman Catholic Church! 

   I think we love Jesus and make good art. Don't compromise anything with what you enjoy or what you create. If we have the Holy Spirit inside of us then, unless we are distracted, everything we create reflects His character despite the content! If we have the Holy Spirit inside of us then everything we enjoy is enjoying Him despite the creator! Art is based on truth perceived by the artist, but even if that artist does not have a foundation of truth in scripture all of Creation will sing His Praise (Psalm 148)

   All of this is not to say that we shouldn't appreciate fine art, though it be tainted by the immorality of non-believers. After all, of what purpose is morality if we don't have Jesus? Moral and immoral people are no different if Jesus has no place in their life. I say enjoy art. Enjoy all art, as long as your not compromising your relationship with the Father. Sexual immorality conveyed in media or art is notorious for distracting believers in our society from their relationship with Jesus. That doesn't mean some haven't figured it out yet, but it does mean that we should ask Jesus what He thinks. But with that said, please go watch a Wes Anderson film. This one is good to start with:

Art portrays beauty, beauty portrays truth, and truth portrays the character of God.

-Trey

Why we're recording a folk album.

In 2 months, we're heading back to Mississippi.

But just for 7 days! Our band will be recording our first, full length album with BlueSky studios in Jackson during the first week of October. We're obviously quite excited, as any musician would be, but most of our excitement is directed less towards the album itself, and more towards the ensuing journey it will bring. This is our mission! This is how we're going to bring the Gospel to the dark places of our county! This is how many people we encounter will hear about Jesus, and hopefully respond with a desire to initiate a relationship with Him! I'll explain by telling you the full story...

I've always wanted to write songs. I first became interested in music when I was 13 and decided to grab my dad's Ovation from his closet and start awkwardly strumming out some chords my friend showed me. I learned fairly quickly and started doing cover songs the next summer, but that's about as far as it went for awhile. Granted, I did get a lot better a guitar, but I was never really able to write songs for about 8 years. Even my first few songs were messy at best. I was in a band in Jackson with 3 of my best friends in the world, and we were having so much fun making music that I decided we should do originals just for fun. What came after that was not necessarily bad, it just wasn't good. People said they enjoyed my songs, but I never felt like I had a gift of song writing. They were mostly about my relationships with Allie or stories about different people or places. They were mindful of Jesus, but not actually about Him. They were few and far between and I always felt like they were forced; sort of like telling a story in Spanish without actually knowing how to speak it very well... I could get by, I just wasn't fluent.

Skip ahead to this past winter where I experienced probably the darkest time of my life. An adrenal gland failure, mixed with a vitamin deficiency, during the worst Indiana winter in 100 years led to depression, chronic fatigue, and lethargy unlike I'd ever experienced. I lived in this for about 5 months before Jesus miraculously saved me. And when I say "Miraculously," I mean it. In one day, my condition was diagnosed, I started a vitamin program to heal my adrenal glands, God released me from the job I had endured for 6 months, He called us to be missionaries in our town to start the things we had been praying into for years, and we started planning a month long trip to our beloved Mississippi. Our lives changed. And with that change came something unexpected, but quite welcomed: I started writing songs.

Maybe the best way to describe what happened is to liken it to when people are baptized by the Holy Spirit and they start speaking in tongues: something wonderfully spiritual happens to a person and then they immediately start speaking a language they never knew before. I guess I was baptized by the Holy Songwriter. That's not to say that my songs are divinely perfect or anything... they're certainly divinely inspired, but I still wrote them and I still mess things up a lot. God just decided one day to give me the coolest gift that I'd been wanting for 11 years. His timing was pretty great too!

Maybe a month before this, I had planned on doing a show with a kid from our Tuesday morning art ministry who was a crazy good musician (his name is Jimmy and he's incredible. He was invited to play in the San Francisco Folk Festival this past summer... check his music out here). I had promised him the show so that he would have a chance to perform his songs for some people in our church. But then 2 weeks out, I realized that it would be too much to for me to juggle with my job, getting ready to go to Mississippi, and having to move all our stuff out of our friend's house that they were selling. I had planned on canceling, but before I could tell Jimmy, me and Allie were at a Missional Community conference in Ohio and the Lord clearly led me not to cancel. Jesus told me to do the show because He wanted us to sing songs about Him as a way to preach the gospel to the people in our town. I was really excited to get such clear direction and looking forward to doing the show, but I wasn't really sure what songs He was talking about. There were a few covers that I thought would be cool, but it seemed like something was missing....

Well, you can figure out the rest.

I got my sister and good friend together, and in 10 days, the Lord gave us 10 songs which we were able to perform at the show, and it was beautiful. As I looked at people's faces while we told them about Jesus using folk music, I couldn't help but think that He planned that for me before I was even a thought. I could see His smile, as He wrote the notes for my existence before He even created earth. I could see the joy in His face as He watched me, so fully satisfied in Him, as I operated in things He had for me, using things He gave me, to reconcile things back to Him. It was wonderful.

Have you ever done something you feel that you were created to do? Eric Liddell says that's when he "feels God's pleasure." I couldn't agree more.

Since then, we've written 30 songs and have painstakingly chosen 11 to record so that as many people as possible will hear these songs about the Jesus that has so greatly changed our lives. We want to bring these songs to dark and spiritually abandoned places to tell lost and hopeless people about a Man who wants desperately to redeem their hurting hearts back to Himself. We want to dispel the lies about the person they may think is Jesus with the lovely truth about the real, live, crazy awesome One.

And let me tell you: Jesus loves folk music. That is why we're recording a folk album.

Forgiveness!

"What does it even look like to forgive someone who has hurt you?"

I've wrestled with this question for over a year as I carried wounds from my past given to me by unsuspecting people in my life. Granted, these were not mighty wounds; a water drop in the sea of pain more like, but wounds all the same. For the sake of transparency, and since this story is redemptive in the end, I'll share specifics:

The summer before my junior year at Mississippi College, I interned at a church plant in St. Louis, MO. One of the pastors invited me to live with him and his family for the summer rent-free for the whole summer. They fed me, they included me in everything they did, and the pastor (I'm not going to say his name, but it's David) poured into me constantly. I learned more in 3 months about discipleship, community, the power of the Gospel, and missions than I had probably learned in my entire life, and all because David saw immeasurable value in biblical discipleship. I was radically changed that summer, and I still remember vivid pictures of God revealing His overwhelming Love to me in tangible ways.

Then, after my summer as an intern, my life moved pretty fast. In July I got engaged, in August I got married, in September we moved to Spain, in October we found out we were pregnant, in November we traveled to 13 cities in 9 European countries, in December I started working back in America to provide for my new wife, and in January I started my senior year of college. Needless to say, things looked different.

So then good news and bad news. The good news was that whilst finishing school, the church in St. Louis called me to offer me a full time job which I was to start immediately after graduation. The bad news was that it sucked. (Keep reading! Remember, it's redemptive!)

Now, as you can probably guess, I was not aware of the fact that it would suck whenever I excitedly told Allie that we would be moving to St. Louis and working for the best church we'd ever experienced. I was not aware of the fact that it would suck when we left both of our families in Mississippi and re-located our entire lives 8 hours north on Interstate 55. I was not aware... but God was.

Now, I really should explain what I mean... My job sucked, but St. Louis was awesome. The people in our church were some of the most loving and caring examples of God's tenderness and kindness we had ever experienced. We loved that city passionately, and we knew discovered what Jeremiah meant when he talked about finding his own welfare in the welfare of the city. I vividly remember Chuck from our urban garden inviting me into his home for the first time and giving me a 4ft tall marijuana plant to destroy because he knew that he couldn't turn to pot to control his anger and that only Jesus redeems us from our raging flesh. I distinctly remember the homeless man that walked up to our pop-up show on the corner of Locust and 11th and wanted to play Wagon Wheel with us on his harmonica which lead him to tears of joy as he performed. I'll never be able to forget shouting (literally shouting), in font of the arch, the gospel of Jesus' unimaginable love through a microphone to the people who stopped to listen as we all wept in awe of our Creator. As well as countless other memories that stick out in my mind like a cold glass of water in the Sahara.

Really the only part that sucked was my job and my relationship with David. But it was enough. I didn't know what was different but I knew that it was. How could the same tasks, relationships, and place as two summers before be so drastically different? I concluded that it was my fault and that I should probably just get over it.... but I couldn't.

Unfortunately, the redemptive ending I keep mentioning did not take place as I drove away from St. Louis into my new life in Indiana... life's not always a neatly wrapped package. No, I actually carried open wounds with me as we met new friends, attended a new church, found a new job, and thanked Jesus for rescuing us from such a painful environment. But then, as normal life set it, I started noticing this wounds which were getting awfully infected. I started thinking several times a day about specific memories of pain or things I wish were forgotten. Thoughts of ill-will and even hatred started plaguing my mind as Satan slowly used my foundation of pain to build a house of bitterness. Then it was from within this house of bitterness that I asked:

"How on earth can I forgive someone who's very memory brings me pain?"

Then I started thinking about other people's pain and it made mine look like the aforementioned water drop into an ocean of suffering. Some of my best friends in the world are currently on a nation-wide tour screening a documentary about the evil of sex slavery and how it's origin takes root in our own hearts. Allie, Viva, and I were able to join them for the first 2 weeks of their tour and as I thought about the thousands of precious girls who had been repeatedly raped by men enslaved to their evil desires and the unfathomable weight of pain each of them carried, I was faced with the reality that if I can't forgive David, these girls would never be able to forgive their perpetrators. But then, Jesus reminded me that He can.

So, with all these thoughts in my head, in the middle of my house of bitterness, Jesus did what He always does: He whispered something that changed my entire life. I was sitting in church as a guy from England talked about forgiveness when I asked Jesus what He had for me. He told me to do two things: Go to St. Louis and meet with David, then tell him that I forgave him. A pretty simple task except for the fact that I hadn't forgiven him, but Jesus told me to, so I did.

A week later I sat on David's porch with him and his wife as we hung out and talked much like we had 3 years before. Time was getting away so I changed the subject, looked him in the eye, and told him that I forgave him... then something happened that made me instantly weep (even as i type this!):

i actually did.

Jesus heals. He redeems. And He loves us so much that He will do anything to tear down our houses of bitterness to hold us in His bear hug. He gave me forgiveness unlike anything I ever saw possible and a years worth of bitterness and hatred growing it's putrid mold inside my heart was no match for the crazy love of my Dad who sought complete freedom for me. Now, all those thoughts that used to haunt me daily are completely shadowed by the beautiful picture of David, with tears in his eyes, looking at me in total humility as he asked forgiveness for every wound I had held on to. All I did, was respond to the voice of Jesus, and He gave me things that continue to overwhelm me.

He loves us so much.

-Trey