Wandering Star

Confessions of a Christian Music Fan

2012-02-08T18:10:00.005-06:00

It was a hot Kentucky afternoon, and the spacious canopy of a white vinyl tent was only a fragile barrier between us and the unforgiving skies. Maybe the heat was part of why some festival-goers chose to shelter in the tent that my friend Joy and I had started fondly referring to as “the hipster tent.” We were sitting on ground that was by this point more dirt than anything else. I could feel the few remaining strands of coarse grass against my sunburned legs as I leaned back against a support pole and listened to a skinny, unassuming artist standing with his acoustic guitar on the barely-raised stage.

“This is a song I wrote to a pastor,” he said, the slightly mischievous tone that often colors his words brighter than usual. “A pastor of a specific church, that has some ideas...”

Derek Webb’s small circle of fans started laughing, mostly in anticipation. Derek never said any names, but within the first few lines of the song it was obvious who he was singing about. The song is a rather wry piece poking very pointedly at a particular church’s reaction to homosexuals. It’s subversive in the best way-- we can laugh at it, but at the same time it has an edge, a slightly uncomfortable taste that pushes us to reconsider how we view people, what it means to love.

The day before I’d seen a band that would probably have sent most Derek Webb fans running for cover in the nearest fair trade coffeehouse. Building 429 put on a fantastic show, full of slick production, shimmering lyric videos, and a showmanship that filled every inch of the main stage they occupied. Jason Roy owned the stage with a style reminiscent of a sanitized Bono. His powerhouse voice rolled out over the waves of smooth guitar tone while hundreds of people screamed along, hands raised, eagerly cheering to affirm the bands’ well-crafted gospel statements. It was like a megachurch meeting on a gravel field.

Welcome to the dichotomy.

As someone who has spent the last few years of my life traveling to multiple states, chasing tours, catching festivals, volunteering to do merch for half a dozen or so bands, reading legal documents and news stories related to music, writing for a major Christian music website, photographing shows, and listening to several hundred Christian bands... I see a lot of contrasts. Christian music has become almost impossible to define. I think we can all agree that Casting Crowns falls neatly in that category, but what about Underoath? They play clubs where people throw beer cups at the stage, where some audience members end the evening wearing significantly less clothing than they started with... and yet they sing things that are true. Do they get the stamp of approval?

And what about the prodigals? Derek Webb is one of them, a disillusioned child of the CCM industry who found his beginnings in the clear-cut Christian band Caedmon’s Call. Kevin Max is another-- we all like to talk about his role in the groundbreaking DC Talk, but when someone in the CCM press alludes to his recent indie career, graphic novel authorship, or his odd habit of wearing pink feather boas, we act almost like we’re embarrassed.

Amidst all of this, there is a whole group of artists in the category of Christian music who spend their entire career trying to avoid being counted as such. They feel like the term limits them, or that it’s unfair, or that it means something they don’t want to be a part of, or that it doesn’t mean anything at all. And I can understand this. I give all of this introduction because the term “Christian music” is one that has to be used slightly loosely.

I ride the line between mainstream CCM culture and crossover bands who flinch uncomfortably if you throw out the phrase “Christian rock.” I have seen both Casting Crowns and Underoath, in case you wondered, and everyone in between. I’ve sold merch to families in churches and I’ve come out of bar shows smelling like the beer someone spilled all over the floor. I’ve heard good music in both places, and in both settings I’ve seen the gospel come alive in surprising ways. I try hard not to sell my allegiance to a certain subset of this already complex subculture, to keep learning without compromising my values.

I recently finished reading a book titled Body Piercing Saved My Life by secular rock journalist Andrew Beaujon. It was a fascinating read. Beaujon details the Christian music industry from the perspective of an “outsider,” someone who spent time researching and attending distinctly Christian concerts and events even though he didn’t share the same faith (his foray into GMA week was particularly courageous). It was in places very true, in places very untrue, but thought-provoking throughout. He levels a lot of well-grounded criticism at the market. And honestly, a lot of the criticism he offers has been vocalized more and more in the past few years by Christian artists themselves.

After all the shows I’ve attended these past few years, I can honestly say that a lot of the criticism of the jaded and disillusioned carries truth. I’ve seen ministry warped into marketing. I’ve seen prejudice wear a mask of love. I’ve seen some pretty awful business practices and heard some honestly bad music. Due to my natural pessimism, it often feels so much easier to throw my hat into the ring with the cynics.

But I can’t do that. I can’t ignore the criticism since there is some truth in it, and I don’t want to ignore anyone who has valid concerns. But what I do find slightly uncomfortable and even distasteful at times is the attitude of the critics. Many of them claim that middle-of-the-road CCM artists are total hypocrites who are not practicing the love they sing about but are instead wrapping an easily marketed message in a package of poor art. But these cynics themselves are showing a lack of love to the ones they are criticizing for not loving, thus undermining their argument. The whole thing becomes an endless game of finger-pointing and subjectivity and trying to judge others’ motives. No, cynicism is not the easy way out. The picture is more complex than that.

A few months back, Michael Gungor posted a blog that had the Christian community inside-out for a few weeks due to its very blunt critiques of the Christian music industry and Christian art in general (read it here). After the debate had been going for a while, he posted on his twitter “I am not interested in church bashing, or even industry bashing, for that matter. But I am interested in reform.”

I liked his blog post. I didn’t fully agree with it, but I thought it was well-written and brought up some valid points, and in general I like things that force us to think. I wanted to push a little bit beyond what he said though, trying to understand his attitude, to see where he found balance. “The question then becomes where the line is drawn between destruction and reform,” I replied. “the distinction can be so hard to clarify.”

Michael answered: “I think that reform destroys the bad things, and "destruction" destroys good things.”

It was a good answer. I like it because I am very interested in reform in the Christian art world, but I am extremely wary of destruction. I would rather be maybe overly moderate in my criticism and allow some weeds to grow instead of leveling everything and running the risk of choking out something worthwhile.

Because you see, beneath all the jaded criticism, the battles over phraseology, the jokes about the Jesus-per-minute requirements on Christian radio... there’s something else happening. This is something that the cynics often politely leave in obscurity, something that the book I recently read left out entirely: lives are being changed.

And not just by the really high quality artists who are making musical advances and preaching truth in new ways. Lives are being changed by even the artists who are more likely to be looked down on by elitists-- artists that I have looked down on before. And these are not small changes either. I’m talking about wells in Africa, starving children fed, education provided, the criminal tragedy of sex trafficking addressed, thousands learning about Christ. I’m talking about suicides averted and families healed and addicts finally finding the strength to go to rehab, about the beautiful girls with scarred wrists raising their hands unashamed for the first time in their lives, the bitter boys who’ve already seen way too much finding out that there really is a reason to come out fighting for another round. And I’m not talking about this in an abstract sense. I’m referring to stories and movements and scenes I’ve actually heard and witnessed.

I’ve seen artists praying over fans, staying out for hours to give hugs, taking pictures even when they know that the middleschool fangirl probably doesn’t even own their CD. I’ve watched artists give away merch for no good reason, and I’ve seen them stop and graciously engage a fan even outside of venues, where it interrupts the flow of their ordinary life. I’ve been on the receiving end of this kindness countless times. I can remember the lead singer of a band running up to me carrying a cup of coffee, grinning and saying “I made this for you!” Much of the merch I own was given to me, some of it by bands who could barely pay for gas. Once the bass player for a band I haven’t even met sent me a poster because he was sorry I couldn’t make his show.

And it’s not just the bands. It’s true that there is a lot of behavior I’ve seen at Christian concerts, particularly when I work merchandise, that I would be ashamed to repeat. But there have also been stories I’ve heard and been part of that are indescribably beautiful. I’ve seen people sharing food with other fans they barely know or giving hugs to people from totally different backgrounds and lifestyles. I’ve loaned my cell phone to strangers and given up my place in line and formed friendships.

Here is what it comes down to: the Christian music scene, like any scene, is made up of humans. Humans of all races, all backgrounds, hiding or expressing every struggle and vice under the sun. There are terrible things that happen. There are things too breathtakingly beautiful for words.

Sometimes people ask how I can stay involved with something that I know to be cracked, how I handle hearing music that I know perfectly well is sometimes below broader artistic conventions, how I can listen to an artist without wondering if they’re preaching love through the lips of a hypocrite. I think that’s looking at the wrong thing though. My allegiance is not to the system, or even to the counter-system. My ultimate allegiance is to a God who continues to use Christian music, in all its forms and mutations, as one of the most powerful forces for truth in this generation. Beneath the politics, the conventions, the arrogance, the mistakes, and the over-used chord progressions... redemption is still singing louder than the static. And as long as there are musicians seeking, in their own finite, human way, to sing about truth, I’m going to be standing with them. I don’t care if I don’t like their music or if it doesn’t connect to me personally-- chances are it’s connecting to someone, and my support of the band is helping them reach that someone. This was never about my personal taste or the ever-shifting demands of music critics.

So whether it’s the polished up tunes of Building 429 or the subversive sarcasm of Derek Webb, I am privileged and proud to sing along. I fully intend to keep scrubbing through the industry’s dirt, whether it be in the form of apathy and failure or hypocrisy and closed-minded pride, in order to find the shine always pulsing just beneath the surface.

And so at the end of the day, I find myself defending Christian music, defending those who are honestly seeking to write songs that move us and mean something. Maybe I’m biased. Maybe a part of this is because once upon a time, there was a 17-year-old homeschooled kid with a terrible haircut and no concept of what an electric guitar really was... a kid who stood in front of a stage at a rock show, crying because she finally understood she wasn’t alone in her faith or in her questions. And for that lonely teenager just a few months into her Christian faith and a few months out of crippling depression, the truths sung through the filter of the Christian music machine meant everything.

- Elraen -

(Note: It should be mentioned that I’m writing this post as someone who also listens to a wide range of mainstream music and honestly enjoys some of it and finds value there, though it’s not where my focus lies. It should also be mentioned that I purposely skirted two of the biggest issues in this conversation-- the idea of standards and quality in art and the validity of the sacred/secular distinction. Those are issues too big for me to address in this blog post and, quite honestly, it’s not something I feel I need to address yet.)

The Harder Love

2012-02-04T20:53:00.002-06:00

I have been made painfully aware of an addiction these past few months, an addiction that crawled in quiet and made a home in my life before I even knew its name. I’m still trying to learn how to evict the unwanted vice, but at the least I have named it now. I call it Entitlement.

I talk a lot about love, or at least I used to, before I figured out how little I really knew. This post has been heavy on my heart for a long while, and I feel it needs to be written-- maybe mostly for my own sake.

I find it interesting how I can begin to abuse the term “love.” I call a lot of things love that really are not love at all. I have noticed that what is often labeled love is actually control, or a need for validation. I say I love friends, but I can feel cheated and abandoned when they don’t answer texts fast enough, when they pay more attention to another friend, when they go through a time when they really don’t feel like talking. I say I love my family, but make cynical comments or isolate myself. And when I was younger and fell in love, so often what that looked like was an obsessive compulsion to drink deep every bit of affection and attention the other person had to offer, to want things they never had to give. These things are not really love, yet I have lived all of them at some point, and it haunts me.

I have learned that these places often fall under the name of entitlement. If, for example, I feel I have a need for my friends to know me a certain way, to talk to me at certain times, to act as I have decided they should-- this is me feeling I am entitled to something. I become so blinded by what I think I need that I couldn’t see what I do have, what I am offered. Granted, there are certain base-level expectations we should have. For example, I generally expect that if we’re hanging out, you’re not going to raid my room and replace my Skillet merch collection with Taylor Swift memorabilia-- some things are just basic, reasonable expectations necessary for healthy relationships. I’m trying to discuss here an entitlement that ultimately places all of the focus on ourselves.

And this is the reality I have found: when I feel entitled to something, when I am eternally expecting others to provide for me in ways they were not meant to, I become restless, bitter, disillusioned, and lonely. It’s when I lay down my pride, my sense of entitlement, and instead seek to take in everything I have and to truly express gratitude for it, that suddenly I’m able to recognize how much my needs are provided for. Peace is born in the place where entitlement dies.

That can be the absolute hardest thing to live practically. It means reaching into lives that are broken and being willing to love, even without any return or even a promise that my love will be able to heal anything. I am not entitled to what I would consider to be a satisfying ending to every relationship. I am not entitled to the role of hero, and I am certainly not entitled to safety.

I am not arguing for an attitude of masochism, constantly stating that you don’t need anyone, severing all relationships that are beautiful-- that is pride, and in fact the opposite of what I’m trying to say. My point is that when we let go of this attitude of demand, most of our relationships are more likely to be beautiful regardless of the circumstances they create. We gain freedom to enjoy what we are given without always looking over our shoulders, wondering what everyone else has that we don’t. We get to choose to seek joy in the deepest love possible... regardless of what we lose.

I have a very, very patient boyfriend named Jordan. He was one of my best friends throughout highschool, and at that point I cared about him in a very different way than he cared about me. Because of this, I had to learn some very, very hard lessons about how to not expect anything more than what he was offering. I remember vividly the first time I understood this, when I was in Nashville for New Years with my family a few years ago. We met up with Jordan and his dad for just about two hours to get dinner at a Panera across from our hotel. For those two hours we talked and we laughed and I tried my hardest to soak in every second, knowing I might not see him again for a very long time.

After they left, I sat in a hotel room alone and cried for two hours. I missed him terribly, I had no idea if I’d see him again any time soon, and the worst part was that I knew that he didn’t miss me anywhere near as much. Later, standing on a hilltop near midnight, watching city lights burn bright, I began to understand for the first time. It wasn’t about what I was losing, what I might never have, about the terrible ache of a wish unfulfilled-- it was about the fact that I’d had those two hours, those conversations, those moments. They had been given to me like a gift, so undeserved. I knew then that I wanted to love in such a way that two hours would be enough, that I could enjoy even those short moments with a beautiful sense of receiving a gift-- even if I never got to see him again, even if he never did miss me, I still had those two hours. I would love enough to let go.

This is a part of what I’ve had to learn all over again, years later. I look at my friendships and realize how much they are marred by my pride, and it’s incredibly humbling. My expectations seek control, forever fearing that they’ll be contradicted. I build and destruct until I have formed the loneliest empire, a world where I am eternally afraid of what I do not know.

I am learning to live open handed, to feel entitled to nothing more than what God is granting, for this moment, at this time. I am learning surrender in surprising places, and I am learning that when I unclench my fists, joy falls to fill the hollows of my hands. This is the harder love, the love that surrenders to whatever is offered, whatever is given. This is a work in progress. This is worth the journey.

- Elraen -

Oh Lord, how long will I be haunted by the fear that I believe?

My hands like locks on cages of these dreams I can’t set free.
But if I let these dreams die, if I lay down all my wounded pride--
if I let these dreams die, will I find
that letting go lets me come alive?

- Tenth Avenue North

Welcome to 2012: Trust

2012-01-12T22:02:00.005-06:00

I like traveling. Airplanes are fun, and there’s something beautifully human about airports, but nothing will ever quite be the same as spending hours on end in the car. Around the holidays we spend a lot of time there, our seats hovering a few feet above blurring tarmac as our metal cages hurtle down the highway. I like it best when it’s raining, though I am told it’s dangerous then. I lean into the window, watch the water stain the glass, and drink deep a world spread out like an open sky.

There is a comfort for me in car rides partly because of the lack of control, like on rollercoasters. Even when I am the one driving into late hours of the night, the feeling is the same. Even with hands clenching the steering wheel and the sole of my shoe firmly on the gas, my grasp over the situation is tenuous at best. There are countless other cars shouldering up beside my own at 70 miles an hour, and the slightest misstep and bump in this high speed dance could shatter a life in an instant. Water and ice easily bleed across the pavement, and I will not always be able to avoid them. Every moment of these long car rides, I’m just a moment away from calamities entirely outside of my control. I was reminded of this vividly last summer when I was in a car wreck. In that sudden moment of impact and the crunch of metal and the surge of adrenaline, before we knew everyone was alright, there was a sickened sense of wondering what might be lost.

I still wasn’t afraid of getting in the car after that. Logically, I knew that I’d embarked on thousands of car trips that ended safely, and I wasn’t about to let myself fear something because of a few mishaps. On another level, I understood that even if something worse had happened, that would just be another part of the journey. If everyone who ever experienced a car wreck decided they were afraid to drive, we would live paralyzed and isolated lives.

The year 2011 was the year when, perhaps more than ever before, my life took a few turns (and u-turns) that were not planned. I had control taken from me, and in my struggle to wrestle it back, I got in more than a few wrecks. I started the year with a lot of bitterness and a lot of desperate, last effort plans to try to get my life to where I thought I needed it to be. Within the first few months of the year, every single one of those plans was dismantled. And I felt sure I was left with nothing. My hands were off the steering wheel. I wasn’t even sure there was a steering wheel anymore.

And it was in that moment, when my hands were free, that God said He wanted to give me a gift. I told Him I didn’t want anything, I didn’t need anything, I just wanted to give up. But He quietly stepped in and gave me the only message I would listen to. He reached in through countless iron walls and locked doors and baked-on layers of anger and cynicism and fear. With incredible gentleness, He entered the part of my life that for years had been the most wounded, the most painful, that I had always told Him was beyond healing. He touched it with a hand of redemption, and my world went inside out.

There was a fear that still woke me up sometimes in middle of the night. Fear from the disasters I could remember, the times running off track, fear from regrets. But I have been learning about the nature and necessity of trust.

We have to get in a car trusting that it will reach its destination, no matter how improbable it may seem. It’s only in trust that we can move ahead at all. If we feared calamity every time we got in a car, chances are we’d soon be afraid to even go to the grocery store.

I have a faith that has a much better track record than cars. I serve a God who has never once failed me, even when I fought Him, even when I doubted Him. In my deepest need, in the dark waters where I was the most lost, He walked through the storm to find me. It hardly seems likely that He’s going to leave me now.

If that is the case, then fear would be one of the worst decisions I could make. My regret whispers that this year will be another year full of dark roads and car wrecks, and it would be easy to be afraid. But I am choosing instead to trust-- to trust that I will reach where I need to be, even if it takes longer and the route looks different than I planned. I have seen that God is good, and that He loves. That is all I need.

There are a thousand uncertainties. This year will change everything. I am facing graduation from college with no job, no money, and no plan. There is a temptation to be terrified, but trust tells me that this is going to be one of the best years of my life. God has good things, and I am learning to keep my hands open enough to be able to receive them.

So here I am at the turning, plummeting towards a new beginning, learning to breathe in even when my lungs feel numb. I am excited for the journey. I have no idea where I’ll be six months from today. I have never felt so hopeful in my life.

Thank you all for riding along another year with me. I hope that you choose to hope too, that you find yourself losing control in order to find grace... may 2012 be blessed.

- Elraen -

“This solemn truth I will depend on,

that You could never even think of failing.”

Disciple

Rest

2011-12-11T21:36:00.003-06:00

Earlier this semester, the band Icon For Hire released an album called Scripted. I have listened to it countless times by now. A major theme on the album is the way we hide behind our sicknesses, our heartaches, our masks, and use them as excuses not to move forward and heal. The song “Get Well” in particular hit me like a bullet to the chest.

I like hiding behind things, things that give me some sense of security and worth and validation. I also like hiding behind my imperfections. Some of you who have known me for a while might remember the time I was incredibly ill for 6 months when I was 16, right before I started college. It got bad enough that for a while I was too weak to climb stairs or carrying things or live like a normal person in general. I remember one day realizing how much of a crutch it had become:

“I can’t socialize, I’m sick.”
“I can’t get a job, I’m sick.”
“I can’t be brave today, I’m sick.”

And after I realized that, I realized how selfish this was. Only then I began to get well, because I wanted it and actually started taking care of myself.

I don’t know how often you played games like hide and seek as a child. Games of that sort were my favorite. I learned how to wear the right clothes depending on the environment, how to scope out areas ahead of time (yes, I was pretty hardcore when it came to hide and seek). Most importantly, I learned how to be absolutely still, hardly breathing, not disturbing anything, so that no one would know I was there. See, hiding effectively means being more or less paralyzed. That’s part of the game.

I’ve been hiding behind both sicknesses and pretended strengths for a very, very long time-- well over a year now. Looking back over a year of these blog posts I see snapshots of the soaring highs and aching lows that I’ve visited in the past year... I see the places where God was faithful and it changed me. I also see the places where He loved, but I ran away and hid behind my sicknesses again as soon as possible.

I’ve spent a semester sleeping about 4 hours every night, eating maybe one meal a day. I’ve been taking a full load as a senior in college while working three jobs and trying to keep up with my family and my friends. I’ve been trying to work past some things from the past while facing some major changes in the near future. And all of these things have become walls I can hide behind when it comes to my relationship with God.

“I can’t talk to You, God-- someone needs me.”
“I can’t rest, God-- I have to be a good enough student.”
“I can’t trust You to handle this, God-- I can’t stand the thought of failing.”

My trip to Wisconsin taught me just how paralyzed I have been, in a lot of places. It also taught me that there is still hope for me anyway, that there is so much joy waiting for me. But I have felt an ongoing pressure, compelling me to be willing to actually come out of hiding and take hold of truth again. Because another thing the Switchfoot shows earlier this semester and then my trip to Wisconsin taught me is that I had lost so much of myself. I was reminded of that even more over Thanksgiving when my boyfriend visited and I saw broken places in myself that were, quite honestly, terrifying. So here is me saying the absolute hardest thing for me to say, something that desperately needs to be said:

I can’t do this.

So I’m stepping back for a while-- leaving the grid, moving off facebook and twitter and forums and away from the noise. It will probably be for a few weeks. I’m dismantling some of the things I hide behind, disrupting the cycles I get trapped in. I’ve been praying about this for weeks, and God has made it blindingly clear to me that this is what He is asking from me. It’s incredibly counter-intuitive to me, and I feel like I’m letting a hundred people down, and I feel like this is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in my life. Most of my friendships are long distance and maintained online, and this will be effectively isolating myself for quite a while. But if I’m honest, the past month has proved to me that I can either be obedient in this and continue to heal, or else completely lose myself behind my sickness. I know which one I want.

“Denial doesn’t need to be my friend when I’m a healer that’s in need of healing. Is it okay to not know, not have the answers, and simply be someone who is searching for Someone to save me?” - Disciple

So for the details. I will only be using the internet for uses related to work and my NewReleaseTuesday writing until sometime in January. This means that if you desperately need to contact me, I will be checking e-mail, but I can’t promise answers or that I’ll see it quickly. My basic goals involve reconnecting with God, sleeping, spending some long overdue time with my family (particularly my sister, who is visiting for the first time in two years), getting a photography portfolio assembled and coded, playing guitar a lot, translating Greek... oh, and probably watching Return of the King (because it’s still the best movie of all time, even if it is over 4 hours long).

I’ll be back though. I promise. And I’ll certainly be actively praying for many of you. Since I won’t get a chance to say it-- have a beautiful Christmas, friends. Remember that it is about rescue.

Thanks so much to so many of you who offer me so much kindness and grace and support-- I am so very blessed. Peace to you tonight and in the days to come.

- Elraen -

“Burn away the pride, bring me to my weakness, until everything I hide behind is gone. And when I'm open wide with nothing left to cling to, only You are there to lead me on.” - Sanctus Real

Songs of Strength: Wisconsin 2011

2011-11-18T14:39:00.004-06:00

“I want you to listen to me.”

I looked up. It was late January, early 2011. I was standing in a dark and grimy venue after a show, wearing the worn out skin of midnight. I tried to meet the eyes of the lead singer of one of my favorite bands as he gently said “the joy of the Lord is your strength.”

I didn’t cry then, but I would for hours afterwards, curled up shaking in my room. I was in middle of one of the darkest stretches of my life, and he was the only person who saw through my pride enough to speak light into it. He said a lot of things to me that night that I would carry with me, even when things grew darker. After that night I wrote (there is a blog post you may remember) and I thought and I was changed. And I would finally admit that I could call Kevin Young a friend.

I have a lot of friends, a lot of beautiful, brave, wonderful beating hearts who choose to let me share the ride with them. That’s why my plane was touching down on the chilly blacktop of the Milwaukee airport at 8:30 p.m. on a November Thursday a few weeks ago-- I was there to see a friend. We’d walked through countless battles together, seen the world break, seen God put broken lives back together. And Liz and I had never met. The internet is odd like that. I had felt like God told me it was time to change that, that my long stated promise to go see Skillet and Disciple with her was finally ready to be fulfilled. This was a chance I wouldn’t have missed for the world.

I got to spent time with other friends right away, friends I’ve known for three and a half years. Cara and Joelle were there with Liz to greet me at the airport, and even within the first ten minutes what surprised me most was simply how at home I felt.

The first full day was spent in adventures. Liz, Joelle, and I picked up our friend Jen to head to the venue (with a detour to Build-a-Bear on the way and almost a detour to follow Family Force 5’s tour bus-- it was tempting). We got there and were welcomed onto a tour bus as if the whole thing was a family reunion. When it was time for the show, thanks to Trent we all had access backstage, and thanks to Joelle and Scotty I was handed a photography pass.

I will never forget that night, dashing back and forth in the photography pit with Joelle, so close that I felt ice spray across my skin when Skillet’s cryo rigs went off. I will remember so vividly standing beside Liz and singing out words of truth to shine in the dark, the songs breaking over us like the sparks of fireworks on a clear winter night. Sharing those moments with her was indescribably beautiful.

I was not expecting to be as strongly impacted by the music as I was, after so many times seeing these bands live, but the reality is that some truths will always break down walls. I think one of the moments I remember most vividly is Skillet’s song “Savior,” how raw and real it felt that night: “Everything’s going to crash and break, but I know what you got, what you want, what you need. I’m going to be your Savior...”

I will always, always treasure memories of time on the bus after the show, crowded in with two full bands and my group of friends. We laughed, and it reminded me that laughter is OK. Even if I am a college senior with three jobs and a reputation of responsibility to maintain. Sometimes, when there are friends and songs and everything feels safe, I begin to understand that it’s alright to stop. Stop trying to be perfect. Stop trying to fill the right role. Simply to be, and to know it is enough.

A long night of driving and honest conversation followed, then a few hours of sleep to recharge us for doing it all over again. Liz, Jen, and I sat outside the bus and then on the bus, laughing despite the chaos of our spontaneous decision to go to a second concert. I was stressed at first, unsure how things would work out, but my worry was quickly proved groundless. Kevin looked out for us, and before long we were watching Disciple play an acoustic afternoon set.

After the events of the day before, I was unusually vulnerable. I was turning over some new ideas in my head, some challenges to things I’d been clinging to for a very, very long time. I knew what Disciple would play beforehand, so I should have been able to brace myself. But the reality is that even before they had finished introducing their song “After the World,” I was hunched over sobbing.

God has worked on me a lot, these past few months. The refining process has at times been almost unbearable (it’s never fun to see how selfish, bitter, unfaithful, and arrogant I really am), but it’s been necessary. The reality is that I have been struggling with terrible doubt, in everything I once so ardently believed in. I remember where it started. It started sometime this last winter, in the midst of what I perceived as an avalanche of failure, where I began to believe that redemption doesn’t work. I began to believe that love does not change anything, that my love is worthless. Instead of the steady voice of hope that used to pulse under my skin, I got a new voice: guilt. Guilt dictated every action, every moment. And no matter how much of my soul I sold into slavery to guilt, I couldn’t get better. I was still the same broken child straining under the weight of the world, the self-imposed burden splintering my shoulders.

When Kevin introduced “After the World” and then the band began to play it, this song that I have heard almost every day for three and a half years, something in me that I’ve been trying to force to a breaking point finally cracked. It was like I was beginning to realize, after the events of the day before, that the things I once thought mattered didn’t matter at all. “Please, God,” I begged, as I have hundreds of times this year. “Just let me know if You love me. Please, please, let me know.”

And I was answered. I understood in that moment, as the words of the song flooded every hollow in the room, that God wasn’t just sending me half-heard whispers, as I had been thinking for all this time; He was practically screaming at me, so loud, but with the gentleness of a Father. Oh, Mary. I have seen everything. I have heard everything. And I love you, child.

And that was why I was sitting on the steps backstage beside Liz and Jen crying like a scared little kid who has finally felt their Father’s arms wrap around them after a long nightmare. These places where I have poured myself out until I broke-- God saw those. These places where I have screamed truth into the deafening silence until my lungs went numb-- God heard me. These places where I have worked myself into a weariness of the soul that clings like a dull ache-- God felt that. They were not wasted. I was sitting beside a living picture of redemption in my friend Liz, I was seeing His love in the incredible kindness of so many friends. And for the first time in nearly a year, I was beginning to hear Him again, hear Him say I love you. And I knew then that as long as I can hear Him say He loves me, it will be enough. Every moment of doubt and fear and pain will be worthwhile for even one fraction of a moment where I hear His voice and know I still belong to Him.

I will love you after the rain falls down, I will love you after the sun goes out. I’ll have My eyes on you after the world is no more.

That night Liz, Jen, and I stood beside the stage, sometimes joined by Kevin. I was fighting with what I’d heard, trying to decide if I could accept it. I remember the words in Skillet’s songs cutting deep for the second night in a row: “I hate living without You, dead wrong to ever doubt You.” And I remember deciding that I would step out and take the hand of hope, even if it still seemed shaky to me.

That night we laughed a lot. It was like an alternate reality after the blur of life in college. I will never forget the kindness of friends, that whole weekend. Liz eternally providing for me, singing with me, laughing with me, sharing with me. Jen’s calming presence and share in our adventures. Joelle’s conversations and help with the photography pass and the way she reminds me that it’s alright to enjoy things. Brian and Lindsey letting me crash in their house in the first place, letting me drink their coffee and get to know their beautiful children. Andrew getting me a Monster when Liz told him I was running out of energy. Trent setting up backstage passes and throwing red vines at us on the bus. Israel giving advice on bypassing security (who would have thought “we’re with the band” really works?). Amanda’s hugs and constant smile, no matter how much she had to do. All of the We As Human guys for taking our presence in stride and getting to know us. Jonathan for taking time out of his schedule and standing in the freezing cold to catch up. Kevin, who spent an entire weekend looking out for us, talking with us, and giving selflessly when he had a thousand other things to balance.

The next morning we went to church. I got to see Cara and Joelle again, got to meet my friend Heidi. The church there is unbelievable. If we had more churches like that, our world would be a very, very different place. I went in and was quickly completely blown away by what God was doing. At first I felt like an observer, able to see the beauty but not break through the wall and be part of it. That very quickly got turned inside out.

This is one of those moments that can’t be fully hammered into correct boxes and packaged on a blog. Suffice it to say that God took every barrier still remaining in me after the day before and absolutely shattered it. No more defenses then, nothing left but the raw reality of who He is and what He has done and how deep His grace is. He radically changed something in me, and I felt the faith and joy that I’d been fighting to know come flooding back into me, too much to contain. I knew almost right away that I would never be the same person again. I would go home, but I would be different. I was overwhelmed. I was joyful.

If I had to attempt listing everything I took away from the weekend, it would be too much for words. It’s been hard to write even these words because I want to respect people who read it. I want to honor my friends in bands (who, in case you wondered, really are real people, and I would very much like to respect them as such-- I could write a novel on that alone). I have chosen everything I share here with the hope of honesty.

The reality is that everything that entire weekend reminded me who God is. I saw Him living in the kindness of friends, I heard Him breathing in the songs. I saw hope in places I once thought were hopeless.

And I was reminded that I am seen. The places where I have been broken were not wasted, there is still grace for these terrible failures, and love is still so very, very much alive. And it was like my heartbeat was restarted. I began to fully feel things for the first time in a long while. This is what things earlier this year were leading up to-- so many things. Even in the times of the worst heartache, God was working. I was never forgotten.

And this is the beginning, not the end. This is where I can finally find the freedom to step out and know that God is who He says He is, to let Him have full Lordship over my life again. This is where I can begin to learn that failure does not define me, and indeed God redefines failure.

There are things to come, even for this blog. There are some stories that I feel are finally going to need to come to light. I am not afraid of what doors He might open. I have been reminded again what it is to see God’s beauty so fully, to feel His love so deeply, that I forget to care about anything else.

The words that Kevin spoke in January echo back through my mind over and over, and I finally feel I can claim them as my own-- “the joy of the Lord is your strength.” Certainly, I’ve tried every other method of strength I could find in myself, and it has fallen short. But now I find the place where I am made alive every time I start to die, this strength that absolutely cannot come from myself and yet has become so deeply embedded into who I am... His joy is my strength.

As so many have said, this is where we begin to live... when we reach the end of everything we are and find that He is still there, and He is enough.

Be blessed today. Know that you are seen, you are heard, and you are loved.
- Elraen -

Redemption Has Stories to Tell

2011-10-22T20:49:00.008-05:00

For most of this year, this blog has held thoughts, but few stories. But tonight I have a story for you... maybe more than one.

Last weekend, I had the chance to go see one of my very favorite bands. Twice, actually. The first time, they were at my school. Early afternoon, my friend Joy arrived, and we set off for the performance center together.

Despite the fact that Switchfoot has held a steady position in my top five bands for years now, I had only seen them once before, a year ago at a tiny show in Tyler that impacted me deeply. So when we got to watch soundcheck with the rest of the fanclub, it was with a beautiful feeling of awe. We sat to listen to them play Souvenirs and Afterlife for soundcheck, and I closed my eyes and felt the bass pulsing through the wood handles on the chairs. I closed my eyes and soaked it in.

Afterwards, we got a brief chance to talk to the guys. You might remember my story of meeting them a year ago, how I said a grand total of one sentence the entire time. This time I had things to say. Even in talking to Jon Foreman, who I have an extremely deep respect for, I wasn’t afraid this time. I had them sign my favorite hoodie, the one I wear almost every day, the one that carries memories stitched in the cloth.

That evening I worked merch, behind the table with one of the most chill, kind guys I’ve ever done merch for. I hadn’t worked merch in close to a year now, so it felt so much like coming home. We helped hundreds of eager fans. I answered questions about the band. I made a few people smile, but many more of them made me smile.

And when the lulls came, we got to go in for the music. First it was during Anberlin, another of my very favorite bands. At my university’s performance center, there are two sets of somewhat soundproofed doors separating the massive auditorium from the lobby. Past the doors are two long tunnels that curve beneath the second orchestra before spilling you out facing the stage. Every time I work merch it is the same. I shove the doors open. Immediately the music hits me like a wave. No matter how much I brace myself for the impact, it still sends shivers rushing over my skin. I run down the tunnel, seeing stage lights flicker at the end. It’s like diving into the ocean, deeper and deeper into the overpowering pulse of the waves.

And it was beautiful. I am prone to forget. I take a lot of roles in the music world now, wear many different faces, and I always carry the fear of failure in each. Photographer, writer/reviewer, merch volunteer, dedicated fan. These are names I wear. These are labels I struggle with at times, trying to learn to fit the job descriptions more fully. It’s terribly uncomfortable trying to slide into a partial skin never meant to be a complete shelter. So that night I let go of the skin, of the shells I hide inside until my soul dwindles to a sullen spark. Instead, I did the best job I could as myself... as someone who loves the music, who sees the music as a vessel for unimaginable beauty. And that freed me. I stood near the stage, singing along, every word familiar as it left my throat.

After the concert, many of us gathered around Switchfoot’s bus, as is tradition. Jon came and told us to meet him out front. After a few location changes, we gathered on the stairs facing the front of my campus. Jon came with his guitar, standing on a low brick wall, all of us gathered on the grass. He played and we sang, sending melodies into the face of midnight. And it was easy to believe then that sometimes life is terribly beautiful.

There was a day to recover before the next time. On a Monday morning I left work early and Joy left class early and we piled into a car with my sister Mercy and our friend Caleb to set off for Dallas. We reached the venue early, and soon Joy and I were in for another soundcheck and meet and greet. This time the group was small.

I had brought a Starbucks cup for the guys to sign, something I had planned a year ago. It prompted conversation, more places for memories. We had time to talk to each of the five guys, who remembered Joy and I from two nights earlier, despite how many faces they see every day.

When we talked to Jon, he asked us what they should play that night. I have never made a request of a band before, partly due to my almost painfully sharp desire to be respectful-- I never want to be “that one fan” who is eternally convinced that they know the setlist the band should be playing. But since he asked, after discussing the setlist for a few minutes, I mentioned a song called The Shadow Proves the Sunshine. We talked about it for a minute, and I faced again the complete impossibility of telling someone how a song they have captured can in turn capture me. He listened with so much kindness. He said they couldn’t play it that night, but they would try to soon.

Afterwards it was time for hours in line with new and old friends. It’s incredible, how many beautiful, broken, shining people you meet at rock shows. I was there as a photographer, but I didn’t want to separate myself, even when we got into the venue. There were good conversations. Even once I was in the photography pit, a place I never would have dreamed I would be able to go, I walked along the barrier talking.

And then for the music. Even in the mad dash of the first three songs, scrambling through the photography pit, learning the ins and outs of a beautiful camera loaned to me by a very kind friend, trying to capture the songs, I found myself singing. I couldn’t help myself.

After I left the photo pit, I stood near the front on the side, cradling two cameras. Switchfoot played one of my favorites, Thrive, for the very first time that night. And then I heard them begin playing an older song, We Are One Tonight. Jon climbed off the stage, slipping to lose himself in the crowd, as he often does. I know their habits well enough to know what they were doing with the song. They almost always play it as a medley. And sure enough, soon they slipped into a different chorus, and from deep in the chaos of the crowd I heard words saturating the thick air:

“We are crooked souls trying to stay up straight, dry eyes in the pouring rain where the shadow proves the sunshine. Two scared little runaways, hold fast to the break of daylight where the shadow proves the sunshine.”

A lot has happened in the year since I last saw Switchfoot play that full song live. There has been so much beauty and so much heartache. I would venture to say that this past year has held most of the deepest hurts and the most indescribable joys of my life, and it has been very, very hard. There have been deaths and friendships lost and dreams buried and shades of doubt threatening to drain the light from the sun. And so to come back, to find that the songs are still beautiful, still true, and still reaching...

Many of you have heard me quote Thrive over the past year, since Jon first played it at aftershows. There is a beautiful line there: “I come alive when I hear You singing, but lately I haven’t been hearing a thing.” I claimed that as my reality before these shows. I begged God simply to let me hear Him singing again, to grant even echoes of His true song. And it was in that moment, as Jon walked by me in the crowd, singing one of my favorite songs, that I heard again. I heard redemption singing in the incredible kindness of a band who barely knew me, in the gift of the pictures and the provision of a camera, in the conversations with friends, in these songs that the guys poured every drop of their souls into. The best music happens when the musicians boldly climb on stage and bleed. Switchfoot is good at this. They breathe hope from the deepest places of their lungs.

And so several minutes later when a sold-out crowd sang the lines of a song that continues to follow me through these long college years, I could believe it again, let the truth own me: “maybe redemption has stories to tell, maybe forgiveness is right where you fell. Where can you run to escape from yourself? Where are you going to go? Salvation is here.”

Rain often comes on the days that mean the most to me, and tonight the rain found us and poured over the venue’s worn-out roof. We stood in the foyer talking with new friends until they closed the venue down. Then one of our new friends allowed four dripping almost-strangers to ride with him so that we didn’t have to walk the several blocks to our car.

Some of you reading this know me well, some of you barely know me at all. For those of you who don’t know much of my story: I have spent significant seasons of my life battling depression, a fight that has been crippling at times. It does not own me now, despite the most severe relapse in years swallowing the first half of this year, but the reality is that I can count the number of times that I have been honestly happy without being held back by a sense of guilt on one hand. This past weekend was one of them. And I could attribute it to many things. I could say it was the band, these songs that mean so much to me, that I sing to myself over and over again. I could say it was my friends, Joy, Mercy, Caleb, Emma, and William, these people who shared the beauty of the evening with me, who contributed more than they’ll ever know. I could say it was getting to talk to Switchfoot, I could say it was simply being away from school. But the reality is that all of that was simply a vehicle for carrying a deeper gladness.

It is the joy that comes from understanding beauty is still a possibility in middle of the deepening cold. It is the peace that comes from seeing that I am hopelessly flawed and yet my God is still good. It is the hope that comes from finally admitting I don’t have answers, and sometimes that’s alright-- sometimes simply knowing that redemption is real and that it knows my name is enough.

It was like my heartbeat restarted. I can hear the Song again... and I am more than ready to sing along until my lungs cave in.

Blessings tonight. May you hear redemption’s song... may you sing along.
- Elraen -

P.S. - I owe endless thanks to Mercy for dealing with her older sister’s over-excited behavior, Caleb for the ridiculous conversations on the way home, Emma for the conversations and sharing her beautiful camera, William for navigating crazy downtown Dallas streets in the pouring rain in middle of the night, every stranger who high fived me, hugged me, and sang with me. Nights like these are never mine alone.

The True Song

2011-10-13T17:38:00.006-05:00

Jon Foreman has written before about how his songs seem to be converging. He says that maybe eventually he’ll just be playing one long song, a song expressing whatever one thing all his songs now are trying to say.

That came back to me today after I had been turning a new concept over in my head. I love working in analogies, in pictures that are more than pictures. Maybe because I am an artist. My stories and poems and songs mean more than the words say.

I am in a doctrines class this semester, studying the most basic issues of the Christian faith. A consistent theme is that even within Christianity, there are many viewpoints, and many of them are equally defensible. Today the topic we discussed is one that has divided the church for centuries, and one of the reasons is because the core of both viewpoints can be supported as true, even though they seem to be in contrast with each other.

I have been thinking a lot about truth the past few months, fighting hard to find it. I have fought with a lot of doubts this year. It has been a crushing, humbling, and ultimately incredibly productive experience, because it has pushed me to pursue truth with a hunger I have never known before. A frustration I have run into countless times is this simple truth: every human being is fallible. To say that my intellect is an absolute standard for truth is very foolish, because that must mean that my neighbor’s intellect is also an absolute standard for truth (providing we are equally intelligent), and if we disagree, what then? Maybe a good way to say this is simply that if it were possible for humanity to determine absolute truth on their own, we would have done so by now.

So if humanity is ultimately fallible, then there can be no understanding of truth without influence from outside. Even then, the understanding will only be partial, because it has to filter through the dark curtain of our own ignorance and imperfection. No matter how bright the sunlight is, if a creature is born with a thick film over its eyes, it will not see the fullness of the sun.

And what this means is that I cannot ever hope to understand all there is to know about truth. I can understand parts of it, definitely, because in the Bible God has revealed to us everything we need to know (not everything that is because we cannot grasp everything, but everything we need). God in His mercy has chosen to show us who He is, and even though we are so imperfect, we recognize Him. Even the creature with partway blind eyes still knows what light is, even if it does not see its source or see how bright it really is.

So now for my analogy. I have terrible rhythm when I play the piano, and before I started playing guitar it was even worse. When learning a new piece, how I played it was dependent on how I wanted it played. I would turn quarter notes into half notes and slash whole notes in half indiscriminately, and even then no two quarter notes were held for the same amount of time. Time signatures became irrelevant. I just wanted to play. I was incapable of playing with metronomes, and I didn’t feel any need to learn.

In 2009, I performed on the piano for the first time in many years. Beforehand I was practicing, trying to put myself in sync with my friend Ruth’s violin so we could play together. My then close friend, Jordan, was (and is) much better on the piano than I will ever be. He listened to me fighting to get the rhythm right on the second verse of the piece we were playing, and eventually he came over and started helping me. He would tap the rhythm out on the piano or else hum it and I would struggle to match it, fighting to play in sync with him. Eventually we were called to lunch, and he sat beside me and tapped the rhythm on the table as we ate. Afterwards I went back and worked on it some more, forcing my fingers closer and closer to the right rhythm.

After that, my outlook on playing notes correctly changed considerably. There is a beautiful freedom within the rhythm of music. The more you learn the constraints, the more open and free it feels. I cannot explain this, but I know it to be true, for myself at least. I began changing the way I played songs, relearning old songs with the right rhythm. I am still terrible at it, but the point is that I started trying... chasing down the true rhythm of the song, fighting to get it closer to the original. Learning to play all the right notes within the constraint of the rhythm.

I am coming to feel like truth is very much like this. It is not a whole picture that I find and posses. It is an absolute so much bigger than myself that will possess me, and I will always be working to let it possess me more fully, to fit myself more completely within its constraints. I will always be fighting to live closer to the rhythm and melody of Truth.

It takes more than a lifetime. I will fumble sometimes, and my fingers will ache sometimes from the effort. But I will keep playing, keep falling deeper into the endless depths of the song. And of course at times I need the reminder that yes, I am learning how to better move my fingers in time with this rhythm, and I will be able to play so much stronger once I do, but I should never, ever lose sight of the inherent beauty of the Song. Even when I sing along imperfectly. Even when I don’t know all the notes. Even when I have forgotten entirely what the time signature is. The Song is still beautiful.

May I ever seek to sing the true song better... and may I delight in its beauty every step of the way.

- Elraen -

Need

2011-10-05T00:13:00.002-05:00

A theme I have been strongly reminded of lately is one that used to be part of the foundation of how I operated, and yet somehow disappeared over the past two years. The idea is that we are all terribly needy people.

Maybe sometimes it takes failure (or the ever-present threat of failure) to prove how greatly we are in need. From the moment we are born until the moment we die, we need things. We need food and sleep and shelter from day one until our frames our lifeless, our eyes asleep. On a less tangible level, we need love, we need something to hold on to. And if you’re Mary, you also need significant amounts of coffee and music.

And a symptom of need is often pain. It’s like the dizzying headaches I get when I don’t drink coffee, or the slow, steady ache when I haven’t been sleeping. There is a need (whether legitimate like the need for sleep or self-imposed like my need for coffee), and it is not being filled. We feel an emptiness. We feel an ache.

I think there is an inclination for many of us to see “I need” as an unforgivable sin. And definitely in some cases, it is wrong. Most would agree that a heroine addict’s withdrawals do not justify the lengths he will go to in order to get a hit, and most would even say that severe coffee addiction is probably unwise. Many of our needs are self-created, self-imposed. But I am beginning to understand that some needs are necessary. We’re supposed to have them. They are built into who we are.

I find it interesting that in the Biblical account, before the fall, before things break, Adam and Eve are not independent. They are actually more dependent on God then. They need Him, and they know that. But after the fall they hide... after they tried and failed to do anything outside of God (and indeed in opposition to Him).

C.S. Lewis says that we were created to need God, and that part of loving God is needing Him and recognizing that need (reference The Four Loves). God does not need us, but we desperately need Him. It is in that embrace of utter inadequacy and complete sufficiency that wholeness is possible. No more hollow places. No more aches.

I don’t like being dependent, and if we are honest, I think most of us would say the same. I did not realize how fiercely I guarded my independence until I started dating. There were times when I would be incredibly upset for no discernible reason, and then I would realize I was simply angry that for the first time in years I was doing something that by its very nature required another person. It was not entirely of my creation. For this relationship to exist, I had need of someone else. And that was a terrible (and absolutely necessary) blow to my pride.

And so I am almost beginning to enjoy, on some painful level, watching God dismantle the things I once thought I had achieved. There is a quiet peace in the breaking that happens when we realize how absolutely we need and how incapable we are of filling that need on our own. I am a terribly prideful person. I am finding that one of the best antidotes for pride is being confronted with how deeply, endlessly, and painfully I need God. It is a paradox that we feel our need for Him more the closer we get to Him. We often understand it least when we are most broken, in the coldest places farthest from His warmth.

The place where my faith begins is in the place where I notice that this world is broken. Cracks run through every moment and experience, flaws like darkening veins beneath white skin. If it is broken, outside of the state intended for it, there is a need for it to be put together again. This is where I live. I am terribly broken, and I am terribly in need of the Healer.

Come, Lord. You are welcome in this hollow of me. You are the endless fulfillment to my endless need.

- Elraen -

Nothing is Wasted

2011-09-28T01:28:00.007-05:00

I am going to attempt to break the silence on this blog, the longest silence it has known since its creation in 2008. I have written many posts these past two months, but none of them have found their way here yet. Maybe some will in the future, but tonight this is the one that needs to be here.

I have been thinking a lot about the concept of suffering. I have been turning it over in my head, trying to find some clarity, as every human does. We are creatures eternally stranded between joy and suffering, almost incapable of reconciling them, fighting the things we should be running to in our frustration.

Several weeks ago in one of my classes, we watched the older movie adaption of The Shadowlands. It had a profound impact on me, enough so that I am still working through the idea a month later. I could write many blog posts on it, but for the purpose of right now I want to focus on one thing.

For those of you unfamiliar with the story, it follows C.S. Lewis's relationship with and very brief marriage to Joy Gresham before her early death. After she died, C.S. Lewis went through a time of intense mourning and doubt (which we glimpse in his book A Grief Observed). In The Shadowlands, towards the end, C.S. Lewis makes a statement that struck me very, very hard.

“I'm so afraid of never seeing her again. Of thinking that suffering is just suffering after all. No cause. No purpose.”

I relate to that very, very deeply. I won't make excuses for myself. The simple reality is that I had begun to believe again that suffering is just suffering. No cause. No purpose. We make mistakes, and we bleed. Maybe, I have told myself, the wounds never really close. Maybe there is no hope for it-- better to lie down and give in.

Jason Gray released an album last week. There is a song on it titled Nothing is Wasted. It is a painful song for me, a song that I still can barely listen to, because it makes the incredibly brave statement that these terrible things that happen— these tragedies, these failures, these disasters outside of our control, these wounds we bear with us— these things will be worth it. Spring will grow from the cracked earth that has groaned under snow for too long.

“From the ruins, from the ashes, beauty will rise. From the wreckage, from the darkness, glory will shine. Nothing is wasted.”

This is enough to break down walls of self-defense, walls of hurt that I cling to. If nothing is wasted, if suffering is not just suffering but rather a doorway to a brighter joy, a better chance for Love to be known and made known, then I have reason to hope. I have reason to believe that things that have felt unbearably hard will become unimaginably beautiful.

And that is a hard lesson, because it means there is a reason to try again. To find joy in even the darkest places, knowing that the night will be worthwhile. Knowing that suffering has an odd tendency to run towards redemption. We are not travelers set adrift on a storm-tossed ocean with no destination. We have a Harbor, a Home, and a Guide we can trust to lead us there.

This is such a basic concept. I understood this stuff as a 16-year-old. One of my favorite ideas then was this concept that maybe a life surrendered to Christ will not be easy, but it will be worth it. Maybe others need the reminder, and maybe this is simply a reminder for myself. Regardless, the encouragement is this: your scars do not have to be wasted. Your failures do not have to be wasted. Your heartaches, losses, stress, these endless struggles and sacrifices that no one else sees... they do not have to be wasted. He takes these things and makes them beautiful. He takes these aching hearts, these brittle heartstrings, and teaches them to sing.

Be blessed.
- Elraen -

“When hope is more than you can bear, and it's too hard to believe it could be true, and your strength fails you halfway there— you can lean on me and I'll believe for you. And in time, you will believe it too.”
- Jason Gray

Control

2011-07-29T23:17:00.001-05:00

Every year since 2009, my brother and I have made a point of getting to Sixflags to see Skillet play (they have played there just about every year for a very long while). It is always one of my favorite shows in any given year.

This year we set off early enough to spend a full day riding coasters in the park, as well as picking up my friend Joelle. Though the day was the kind of heavy, sticky hot that makes the air feel dirty, it took me maybe 15 minutes to remember how much I enjoy roller coasters and to realize how much I had needed the time with friends.

There is a ride in the park that has been one of my favorites since they built it. This is primarily because most of the ride consists of free fall, which I am a big fan of. Of course there is always the sick twist of fear at the beginning, the feeling that you left part of yourself somewhere above as you plummet towards earth. But after that first split second, it feels like flying.

I tend to be very thoughtful on roller coasters and similar rides. This probably seems like it wouldn’t be the best place to play the philosopher, but I have found that the least conventional places are usually where the best thoughts are born. In this case, as we were free falling, I was thinking hard, and holding one of those quiet dialogues with God that often happens in moments like this.

You see, I realized sometime last year that the reason I love roller coasters so much is partly because I have no control over them. I have had friends tell me that this is why they are scared of roller coasters. There is a set track, and the car moves along it, but you can’t always see that far ahead and you certainly can’t stop the car once it gets started. If a free fall proves too terrifying halfway in, there is no going back. And for some this is terrifying. For me, it is what makes it exhilarating. It is one of the very few situations in my life where I feel like I am allowed to relinquish control, to know I cannot change anything and no one expects me to. I am strapped in place and set moving far too fast to stop.

I used to close my eyes when I rode rollercoasters. I couldn’t stand watching what was inevitably coming. I was fine with putting myself in that position, so long as I didn’t have to handle any more than what I felt at that exact moment.

It’s probably pretty obvious where I am going with this. If I am honest, I am probably the biggest control freak I have ever known. I don’t know if this partly comes in reaction to the fact that I have had extremely little choice over the direction of my life, particularly in the past few years, but the reality is that I struggle with it a lot. I want to be able to lay out everything perfectly, write a list and check the items off. I want dates set in stone and I want a system in place that I know how to operate. When situations prove themselves to be out of my control entirely, I get discouraged and disheartened. I often give up.

I have found that when I surrender my false sense of entitlement to control situation, that is most often when I can actually find peace. When I recognize that I can’t be the perfect friend to everyone, but I can certainly act in love wherever I am placed. When I recognize that I can’t plan out my life perfectly, but I can definitely take one step at a time as God directs it. When I recognize that I don’t even have enough control over my life to save myself... but He knows that, and that’s why He offers grace.

After the free fall we got off the ride. I was incredibly lucky in that Joelle enjoys that sort of thing as much as I do, so we looped around to do it again. I was still thinking. I realized how much joy there is in surrendering control. I realized that there is often that sick feeling at the beginning, the feeling when gravity falls out. And then it feels like flying. As I have said before, it is like falling up.

That night we met up with another friend to watch Skillet play. I tend to follow very specific formulas at shows, but this one broke a lot of my usual habits. I ended up leaving my assigned seat so I could spend the show with friends, which was more important to me than following some idea I had previously carried in my head.

The songs that night were a reminder, these tunes I have heard more than any others, played by a band that has shaped my life for so many years. That night they reminded me that even when I have no control, even in those sick moments of fear at the beginning when the world seems to fall apart, there are truths to hold onto. There are some things that never change. There are still things that are bigger than my life and the plans I lay down.

And though there have been so many times when I’ve closed my eyes tight, afraid to see where God would pull me if I really let go, between the rollercoasters and a rock show I was reminded that I long now to let go with wide-open eyes and an eager heartbeat. It is there beyond the desire for control and in the heart of surrender that I find joy.

- Elraen -

"Peace [is] the absence of fear and striving in the place of utter vulnerability. Absolute trust."
- Korey Cooper

Renewal

2011-07-16T00:13:00.002-05:00

“What other duty would you have me do, my lord?”

“Duty? No. I would have you smile again, not grieve for those whose time has come. You will live to see these days renewed... no more despair.”

- Return of the King

This has been written over several days, and it is perhaps part two of a post I wrote in February (Answered). Midnight and music are filtering and weighing these words, bringing them to what they should be...

For the past two months I have been turning ideas of change and renewal and healing over in my mind. I have reason to do so. The seven months that came before these ideas were some of the absolute hardest I have ever lived through. Though I strive for honesty here, there are places where I can only summarize, and this would be one of those times. In brief, I lost some things that I had been using to define my identity, and I lost them in very painful ways. I saw people I love hurting in ways that to me were unbearable because I could not heal it. I had some of the goals I'd held for three years taken forcefully from my hands. I lost the primary thing that gave me any kind of hope at my school. My older brother moved out and my grandfather died and I was struggling with some terrible weights on my soul. For over 6 months I had nightmares almost every single night, nightmares that left me breathless and exhausted when I woke up. I became irrational. I became numb.

I reached that point where I began to feel like I had nothing left. It's a place I've been before, but it was different this time— it came on like a void and like a fear, like believing with everything in me that I would never be better again.

There is something I found then, a resolve I had known before but never with such intensity. In all the nights that I spent awake until 3:00 a.m. curled up in the dark on my room's floor with my headphones on, I prayed prayers that became impossibly brave because I was so desperate. I told God that He could feel free to keep taking, that He could take away everything else I had. I could watch more things fall apart, I could lose the people I loved the most, I could fail in every possible way, but I would not let go of Him, even when I barely knew Him anymore. No matter how much guilt I felt, no matter how many stars blacked out, no matter how much I lost, I absolutely refused to give up. Even when faith felt more like screaming in pain then like singing, I would sing. Until my lungs caved in and the last shallow heartbeat faded, I would hold on.

There are moments I remember from those months that still make me regret, and there are moments that speak of redemption. I remember driving on highways I had never been on before late at night by myself right after I got my license, with the windows down and rain pouring over me, singing along with Phil Wickham's Heaven and Earth at the top of my lungs. I remember sleeping with the lights still on, suddenly somehow afraid of the dark. I remember standing on top of Stone Mountain and finding healing in unexpected places. I remember curling up on the floor in empty hallways at school and crying like a child. I remember a long conversation that changed my life, late at night after a show with a lead singer who had been my hero since I was in highschool and somehow now decided to call himself my friend. I remember leaning close over my guitar and playing until my fingertips wore blisters and cuts.

Two months ago things began to turn around rather drastically due to a single phone call (refer to my last entry). There are no words for how badly it shook my world. That was the first shadow of what has turned out to be a tidal wave.

In those months where I lost so much, I often told friends that God does not take something away without having something better to give in its place. But even when I said the words to encourage others, I did not believe them for myself. And yet God has begun to gently prove me wrong. Things have begun healing in ways I could never had planned or imagine. I have been handed some opportunities that are breathtakingly bright. Some of the exact things that were taken away were replaced, except made better than before.

I have been expecting things to go wrong any second now, because I know these times never last. I went to Ichthus Festival in Kentucky with one of my dearest friends last month, and beforehand I was sure it would be a disaster, because life had been working out much too well. And yet everything fell into place perfectly. We didn't get lost, we didn't run out of gas or break down. We didn't get sick and somehow, magically, neither of us passed out. I got to see almost all of my favorite bands, and I got to have conversations that would stay with me. I learned some things there that need a separate post in themselves.

A good example of the general structure of all of this comes with the moot. Most of you who know me know that every year I go to Colorado to spend a week with friends from the Christian writer's forum I've been part of since I was 14. It is the highlight of every year and a massive time of growth. But I had been sure I would not get to go this year, due to various circumstances. This was terribly hard for me to accept at first. If I am honest, I sulked like a thwarted toddler. And then I realized that if it was taken from me, God would still provide. I let it go. I told God He could have it.

A week after Jordan visited and after my sister left for Japan, I had some conversations with some friends that sparked thought. Which turned to prayer. Which turned to an earnest evaluation of myself and my motives. And somehow very quickly I had bought a plane ticket and totally rearranged my August plans. I had to let go my sense of entitlement before God could give it to me as a gift.

Again in honesty, I am only beginning to understand where to go from here. I am beginning to understand that it will take me a long time to get over some of the things I lived through last winter and spring. I am beginning to understand that a part of learning grace is starting over... again.

But the beautiful thing is that when we burn clean, it opens up so much space for green to grow back again in the ashes of what we thought we needed so desperately. Yes, the fire hurts. But there is life, even afterwards, and even hiding beneath the soil in the places where the heat is blinding. When you have things taken away, when you feel like a part of you is dead... expect God to show up. Because He's in the business of taking things that were dead and breathing them to life.

- Elraen -

“Take this heart of darkness, I give it up. And all the emptiness, You fill it up. The times that I feel nothing You bring enough so I can live for something— You lift me up. And all these bad dreams, I wake up to the light. And when I can't see, I wake up to You eyes. Wake me up... There's a light up ahead.” - Further Seems Forever

Adventures

2011-06-03T23:40:00.003-05:00

Recently I had a moment in the blur that has been my life and focused in. I began to realize exactly how much has happened over the past six months, how much of it has struck sudden and fast and faded into everyday use before I had time to notice it.

In the past six months I lived a lot, which might be why I feel tired as I write this. I learned how to drive and got my permit and then my license. I bought my first guitar. My brother, sister, and I took our first roadtrip without any outside supervision. I finished my third year of college. I started writing for one of the biggest Christian music sites on the web. My big brother, who had been my childhood hero, moved out of our house, and I became the eldest. I saw my grandfather flicker and fade, and shortly afterwards I stood to remember him... the first time we’d had to say goodbye to a member of the immediate family. I watched my little sister, who I have spent almost every day with my entire life, walk down her own path to Japan.

A lot of these changes barely skimmed the surface of my consciousness. It was a matter of simple survival, one coffee cup, one song, one sunrise at a time. But there was a point in April when I stopped for a moment as I was wrestling with some things through writing in my journal. I had been up late so many nights praying and asking questions with my guitar strings, and in the middle of the weary blur I felt some massive change bearing down on me. It was like standing in middle of a dark and winding road at night, catching a sudden blinding glimpse of headlights as an approaching car turns briefly into the open before disappearing around another hill. I knew I was going to be hit with something. I just didn't clearly know what.

When it finally did hit, it shook my reality sideways and inside out.

I am told so often that one of the things people appreciate most about my blog is my honesty, and because of that I feel I have to write about this in some sense, even though (to be completely honest) I really don't want to and I don't know how. But this is also my primary public platform, so I might as well say everything I need to say now, even if it costs me some pride.

Since I started telling people I am dating, so many people have wanted to talk about this, have wanted me to tell the story. I have been asked a lot of questions, most of them adding up simply to “why did this take so long?” Which for me is a funny question, because that question barely matters at all. People want the whole story, they want to know what was going on in all the years where I stayed so silent on the topic. I can't give people that. Sometimes I can give them a summary, but even that is far too long for this blog.

I can honestly say that this was not the plan. The plan was to stay single for the rest of my life, and to be happy that way. I had effectively built a reputation for being a hardcore cynic, and I liked that reputation, if I am honest. It was safe. In early April I actually wrote a blog entry apologizing for and explaining in some sense my cynicism, but I never posted it. It was easier to let the walls stand.

The shortest version of the story is this: I fell in love when I was 15, and I hated myself for it, and so I lied about it. There was never any hope in the situation. It was like fighting an endless war with no chance of victory, learning exactly how to maintain the fortress walls, how to direct the defense maneuvers, how to keep all the doors locked. It took practice, and it was hard. If I am honest, it was one of the most painful things I have ever experienced. Even to remember enough to write this paragraph is like needles and knives against my skin. It was a terrible fight, and I was incredibly alone. I learned to be content, accepting that this was the way it would always be. And when it changed it was at first like a cannon ball to the chest.

So the answer to the question of why it took so long is actually kind of simple-- it was never an option. It wasn't like I was sitting in my room waiting for him to ask me for years. I wasn't hoping for or expecting that, especially not recently. Even six months ago this wouldn't have been possible— even three months ago, our stories weren't to the right point yet. I have said jokingly that it was his fault it took so long, but if I am honest, it wasn't my time yet either. This was not at all a part of my plan. But God told me to say yes, and so I stepped off a cliff. I'm still trying to decide some days if I'm falling or flying or both.

So this is the change. The last change in the world that I expected, but that seems to be the way that God does things. My head is in an awful tangle, and my heart is even worse. If I am honest though, it feels like hope.

I wrote on this blog a month ago that I had mostly given up on the concept of a future for myself. I said that the summer would be hard, and that music was the only thing I had left that made sense. But now the world has rearranged itself again (I really should learn to stop pretending I'm in control). I think in some ways I feel like I know even less than I did before, that things are less stable. But I feel like it is better this way.

There are a lot of memories that I still can't touch, things I still don't know how to talk about. There is a lot for me to learn. There are a lot of moments that are hard, particularly because of the distance, and particularly because of how many bad decisions I have made. But singing beneath it there is something that I didn't think would ever be a possibility... there is joy. And even five minutes of the joy that I have seen and been given by him makes all the years of loneliness and unanswered questions worth it. I feel terrified. I feel like the most blessed person alive.

There are some people who walk into your life and suddenly it’s flipped upside down. Jordan is, always has been, and always will be, one of those people for me.
- My journal, September 9, 2007

So here's to the adventure of losing illusions of control. Here's to waking up and relearning and change. Thanks so much to all of you who have been so incredibly supportive in the past few weeks with your messages and texts and phone calls and (most of all) your prayers.

Peace to you.
- Elraen -

Remembering

2011-05-15T21:53:00.003-05:00

In my first two decades of life, one thing I have been oddly free from is the face of death.

Two nights ago, my grandfather on my dad's side-- my Opa-- flickered out and went home. I am trying to learn how to process it. I know exactly how I should be feeling and thinking. I outline it like a story with a script in my head. But I don't have the energy to follow the story. I barely feel at all.

I have two very vivid memories of my Opa that have been playing through my head over and over again. The first is from years ago, when I was 12. Around Christmas that year, my mother found a poem printed on a page on her desk. She asked where it came from, if someone had copied it out of a book. I was scared at first, wondering how I could have been careless enough to drop it. Eventually I admitted that I had written it.

My mother liked it enough that she put it in the family newsletter. I found this slightly embarrassing and quickly forgot it. But a few weeks later, I got a phone call from my Opa. I was baffled. I had never been specifically called by a grandparent before.

My Opa told me that he wanted to be sure to tell me how beautiful my poem was. He wanted me to know that it displayed a wisdom that seemed unbelievable from a 12-year-old. He wanted to tell me to keep writing.

I had been writing poetry for 4 years already then, and it would take me 5 more years to find my voice. But that was the first time I believed my poetry had any value. I had never believed it was worthwhile before then.

The other memory is stronger. I was 16, and we were gathered as a family in the mountains in north Georgia to celebrate my grandparents' 50th anniversary. I was at the height of the dark summer, the one with a story I still don't tell. I didn't talk to anyone. I spent hours wrapped in my walls of notebooks and pens. One morning everyone else was busy. I was sitting alone by a window, drawing and writing poems. My Opa came quiet behind me. He said hello and gently rested his hand on my shoulder. "You're a good girl, Mary," he said gently.

I would cry about it later, because I didn't understand how he could say that. It wasn't true, and I knew it. If he had any idea where my heart was, I have no idea if he would have offered those words. But I do know that the words stayed with me, written deep in my memory. In some of my absolute worst moments, he thought I was alright. He told me I had value.

These are the things that I remember. There are much bigger things my Opa did... a German raised in China who spent his entire life devoted to serving his Savior, teaching all over the world. His voice echoes in so many places. My siblings and I carry an incredible legacy. But I think right now, I'd rather remember the quiet moments... the gentle times, the small words. They are what I will hold onto as I say goodbye.

And I know there are many stories like this, stories that will be spun somewhere between laughter and tears over these next few days as family gathers to lay him to sleep under the grass. These are the things that are important now.

Switchfoot has a song titled Yesterdays. In this song they offer the simple phrase "every lament is a love song." And this means for me that maybe telling these stories, grieving, even shedding tears... it is a way of loving, of saying his life was beautiful.

I will write a song about him, soon. There is no melody yet, just half-formed words, but it's already pressing against my skin. A lament. A love song.

I am remembering, even if I don't yet understand. And I will tell his stories, the stories that will last long after the service on Wednesday. The stories that say something about the value of life, even if it carries the terrible weight of goodbyes.

- Elraen -

One More Year

2011-05-09T10:11:00.000-05:00

I have now completed the simultaneously best and worst year of college thus far.

When I chose The Shadow Proves the Sunshine back in November as my theme song for junior year, I had no idea how accurate it would be. The contrast has been absolutely intense.

There have been primarily shadows for a long time now, with a few moments of quick and short-lived radiance like a lighter fluid fire. And yet, unusually, school has not been the problem. School has instead been almost a refuge. The steady rhythm of work and return has been a wonderful constant. While I’ve struggled with stretches of apathy more than ever before this semester, it’s been overcome.

Most of all, my school feels less dangerous to me now. Not that it doesn’t still feel like a cage; that’s what it is, so it will always feel that way to me. But now it’s a cage that I have accepted and learned to live in. I am not sure whether this is bad or not, but I have found that there are some good things in the cage with me that I hadn’t noticed before because I was so busy trying to pick the lock. Notably, there are a few people in here with me who are incredible. I have had a group of friends at school who I actually feel comfortable being around for the first time. I get the distinct impression that they actually want to be around, which is odd to me because there’s no reason for it. But it has been an incredible comfort to me to know that there are people to talk to at college events, to sit with, to go to shows with, to watch movies with, to stay up late talking to… these are things that I have never had before. My “social life” barely counts as such by normal standards, but just the fact that there are people around who know my name, who know the music I like, who and are willing to talk… that is mind-blowing and baffling and thrilling to me.

I think one reason why I’ve hated school so much less this year is that in the midst of everything outside of school, school has provided something that makes sense. I know exactly how to handle school. It’s a wonderful cause and effect situation. There is a fear of failure, it is true, but there are obvious ways to overcome the failure— I can simply work harder and the failure goes away. In the rest of my life, I can’t do that. Everything I have tried to do over the past few months outside of school, I have failed. No amount of work or striving ever makes any kind of impact.

I have slept less this semester than at any other time since my final semester of highschool. For long stretches of time I’ve been getting 4 or 5 hours of sleep a night... sometimes less. This is not always due to homework. It has made focus incredibly challenging. I have my own room now for the first time, which helps. Most nights I am alone in my room for 7 or 8 hours at a time before going to sleep. It is the only way I stay sane.

I am still sorting out the tangles of another year, and it is hard for me to say how God will use the things that have happened. But one thing I have learned is that sometimes, even despite the shadows, there is joy to be found simply in knowing sunshine exists. Even if you can’t see it or touch it or taste it. Sometimes I forget that my friends who live far away exist. Then they do something to remind me, or I look around at the pictures stuck around my room, and I am reminded. Even if I am not given the things that I need now-- friends close by, a hope for a future, even sleep-- I know that those things are real. Just the fact that these moments of joy and hope exist is enough to be sustaining, even if I cannot see them. I have had to learn more than ever before how to believe that God is still speaking even when I cannot hear Him.

I have one more year. One more year to learn to enjoy the things I have here instead of mourning all the things I have lost. One more year to learn to quiet my own voice enough so that I can listen. One more year to accept whatever path God has already set in place in front of me.

And maybe it’s too soon yet to hope for a change... there have been times this semester when even the word “tomorrow” has seemed like a hopelessly, impossibly brave idea. But there is something in me that is beginning to reach again for the idea that maybe this really is only the beginning.

Peace to you.
- Elraen -

Twists

2011-04-30T10:22:00.004-05:00

I’ve been thinking a lot about how we react when something doesn’t turn out the way we planned it.

Last weekend was kind of a study in that. I had spent the past few months putting together a flawless plan that would have been absolutely fantastic had it worked out right. My dear friend Joy would be coming up on Friday. That night we would celebrate my birthday. The next day my brother Flynn, my sister Mercy, Joy, and I would go to Sixflags for the whole day. That evening Family Force 5 was playing, a band we all love. I had managed to get incredibly good tickets.

The first kink ended up being that we had far too much to do for Friday. I recognize now that I had been overly ambitious in thinking it was a good time to celebrate my birthday, but I basically wanted that out of the way as fast as possible. Regardless, celebrating my birthday ended up being allotted about 30 minutes of eating pizza with my family before Joy and I went to see Eisley in another city.

The Eisley show was good, but also not as planned, because the lead singer got sick so last-minute the band had to pull together a set that did not rely on her. They did an amazing job anyway, but it definitely wasn’t how they’d planned it.

The next day we headed to Sixflags. The day itself was pretty good. We rode a few of my favorite rides, and even in the long lines we had a good time talking. When evening came, we went to the big stadium where I’ve seen Skillet the past two years. The sky was cloudy, but everyone was hoping the rain would hold off.

We got to see Lecrae perform, which was excellent, and then we sat through Hawk Nelson impatiently. Right as Hawk Nelson was nearing the end of their set so Family Force 5 could play, someone came out and announced that due to lightning we had to evacuate (major flashbacks to two years ago).

We all shuffled out of the huge stadium. Joy, Mercy, and I sat down on an open area of cement and talked and waited and watched the lightning. Eventually they let us back in, and we sat down for a few minutes before they came back out and said we had to leave again. This time, Soul Glow (of Family Force 5) got up to apologize. They said that we would get to come back, but by this point I knew better. A few minutes after we got out this time, they announced that the show was entirely cancelled.

This was somewhat dispiriting. It is a three hour drive to Sixflags, and it is very expensive to get in, and all of us had made serious sacrifices to be able to afford it. I had managed to get such good seats. And we didn’t get to see them.

So we went and found a random Denny’s. We ordered pancakes and a bacon sundae and talked and laughed and greatly amused and confused our waiter. Then we started the long, long drive home.

The next day was Easter. This year our celebration was incredibly low-key. The rest of Sunday was a sort of steady downhill, enough so that I won’t go into it.

Suffice it to say that by the end of Sunday, so many things were going wrong that it didn’t bother me anymore. A friend of mine summed it up well: “Not problems, hilarious twists!” And that is sort of what it became for me. I simply decided not to take it too seriously. They evacuate us from the venue? OK, we’ll sit here in the rain and drink soda and make fun of the ridiculous country music they’re playing. They cancel the show? OK, we’ll go and eat bacon and pancakes and drink coffee at Denny’s at midnight. A sibling drops my birthday cake upside down on the dining room floor? Alright, I’ll pick it up, scrape it off, and stick it back together the best I can.

But there are other twists that are a lot harder to do that with. Sometimes some of the twists steal my breath for a while.

For years now, I have considered this upcoming summer to be very significant. I had planned for it to be the summer that I already had a car, that I went out of state to do an internship, that I started moving away from the prison of my college. That is so, so far from how reality is turning out.

I pursued three internships, all of which I was passionate about. Every single one fell through. I will spend all summer working at the library. I will not get to go spend time with all my friends in Colorado-- I’m missing the moot for the first time since 2007. My sister, who is one of my best friends, is going to be in Japan all summer, and though I’m ridiculously proud of her, I’m going to miss her terribly. This is also the first summer with my older brother moved out. All my friends from school are going home, and the two local friends who I spend the most time with are leaving for most of the summer too.

When I actually find time to think about these things, it proves incredibly discouraging. I have had a growing feeling for the past two years (especially as I approach graduation with absolutely no plan and no hope) that my future is sort of a lost cause.

But in the midst of this I am trying to remember again to look at all this, take a deep breath, and welcome the adventure. This summer I will do the only thing that still makes sense to me-- I will work as much and as hard as possible, and on weekends I will drive all over the state and indeed all over the country, chasing music. Two festivals and three individual shows are lined up so far. And if all of this is taken from me too, I will still be able to curl up in my room with my guitar... there will still be places for joy.

This is a blog post of questions, not answers. But I think maybe things I've said before apply here too. Maybe sometimes things have to be taken from us just so that we can learn that we never needed them. Maybe sometimes God has to black out every other light so we can see His light better. Maybe sometimes I just need the terribly painful lesson that I can’t make things work, and I wasn’t ever meant to (since when was it my right to order a world I did not create?). And maybe instead of letting all these hilarious twists trip me, I need to learn how to dance with them...

Peace to you.
- Elraen -

Cure For Pain

2011-04-07T20:08:00.011-05:00

“Oh my God, can I complain? You take away my firm belief and graft my soul upon Your grief.”
- Jars of Clay

Every blog post I have written over the past 6 months has been born out of an intense struggle. This one is no different. It is my attempt at honesty over something that keeps me awake at night.

One of the things that frustrates me most is seeing people I love struggle and hurt. I know part of it is because I feel like I should be able to stop it (which is usually a foolish idea, as previously discussed). Part of it is simply that there is something in me that feels pain from the people around me the way other people hear their voices. It’s like a scent I can’t avoid. Another factor is that I have spent so much time focused on the hurt in people that I have simply forgotten that happiness and ordinary life exist.

There is a popular prayer in the Christian culture right now. It is a prayer that says “God, break my heart for the things that break Yours.” I think that if we actually realized what that would actually feel like, we wouldn’t throw it around so much. I am often terrified to pray that, because when He answers, it feels like more than I can bear. One of the hard things about understanding that there is only One thing that can make you whole is that you become acutely aware of how broken everything else is. And sometimes I spend so much time mourning that I lose focus. It’s not hard. There is a lot to mourn about.

The age-old problem of pain is one that I think we will wrestle with all our lives. For me, I see it everywhere. I see it in the painfully awkward family trying to keep their arguments down to whispers in a store. I see it in my friends who do not understand yet how much their lives are worth. I see it in my own family. I see it in Japan, in Libya, in Egypt. I see it in the dim-lit clubs, screaming with the electric guitars. It pounds against the walls of my heart day after day.

I would do anything to drown it out. I write words, I pray countless prayers through sleepless nights, I listen to songs and play songs, I give money, but I know that I am barely making any kind of dent. Even in the times when I feel like God has used me most, I know that there are so many places I will never, ever be able to go. Sometimes it overwhelms me until I can barely breathe.

The world is broken.

Heaven knows, heaven knows— I tried to find a cure for the pain. Oh my Lord! To suffer like You do— it would be a lie to run away.

- Jon Foreman

Over the past several months, my faith has often felt like a burden because of this. I can’t stand seeing how broken the world is, knowing we are called to shine into that brokenness, and knowing that still some will see that light and not understand. I can’t stand breaking over the things that break God’s heart. It’s hard.

I can’t pretend to offer many answers for this. I am still fighting. If you have any thoughts, feel free to share them. For myself though, there are a few things I have been learning (however slowly).

First is the simple fact that God is not just a God who says “look how broken My world is.” He is also a Comforter. He might allow my heart to break, but He will meet me in the midst of that. Jesus asks us to lay down our lives, but He has already given us hope, comfort, and peace through laying down His. I am prone to forget this, to pretend it doesn’t exist and thus to shut Him out.

Another thing I am learning is that I absolutely cannot function when I spend every moment of every day focused on the things that hurt. Yes, I am called to love, even in (especially in) the dark. But I have a tendency to focus on the darkness to the point where I lose perspective. Reality fades out. I have been reminded of how good I am at deceiving myself in this way over the past few weeks. When my family drove to Atlanta, there were some very hard situations I was dealing with. But in the midst of that, I had friends there who provided a safe place for me to come back to every day, friends who are like light and water when I am blind and thirsty. It amazed me.

This was echoed again this past weekend. A friend was visiting from out of state, and over the few days that we had with her we had some incredibly good conversations that were hopeful and brave. We also spent time just talking about movies and stories, watching music videos, and laughing. It was incredible. It was like being reminded of an entire half of existence that I had completely forgotten about.

We are broken, we are worn so thin. But somehow there is Light that fills these shells and glows through our broken skin.

There is a reminder I was given that I have had to repeat over and over again in the past few months-- the joy of the Lord is your strength.

I am fighting, I am struggling, I am so very tired. But I am learning that I will never get anywhere until I understand that strength to face this terrible darkness has to come from something outside of my own resolve. It has to come from Light. It has to come from Joy.

And when I am resting in that, then I have the strength to keep going. Then I can consider it an honor and a privilege to stand in the darkness, throwing handfuls of stars at the vast expanse of black night sky, praying that a few of them will stick.

“There will come a time, you’ll see, with no more tears. And love will not break your heart but erase your fears...”
- Mumford & Sons

Peace to you.
- Elraen -

Refrain: A Poem

2011-04-04T12:03:00.001-05:00

Refrain
4-1-11

I am the shine beneath your eyes,
the blooming spark that never dies.
This shadow at your windowpane
will never silence my refrain.

When all the blood within you dries
I am the shine beneath your eyes.
With dark tangled around the sun,
your skin’s color might bleed and run.

But when starlight drowns in the shame
and when you quench the candleflame,
I am the shine beneath your eyes,
the call that bids you still to rise.

When nightfall sets in like a doubt
the bottom of your heart falls out.
I’m the hope that flutters and flies,
I am the shine beneath your eyes.

---

My "reject poetry" (the stuff I don't necessarily want to post on the writing forum I'm on) sometimes gets put on either my blog or facebook. I hadn't put one here in a while. This is a quatern, and it is written from the point of view of faith.

Falling Up

2011-03-24T23:26:00.003-05:00

The story of the past six months of my life is the story of the struggle with grace and mercy. This is part two, I guess, to the post I wrote in December (High and Low).

I have thought a lot along the themes of inadequacy over the past few months, and about what it actually means to be enough. I have felt like I was betraying God by the fact that I am not who I should be. I do not love enough, I do not obey enough, I do not trust enough, I do not give enough.

Recently I have felt the quiet reminder from Jesus... that’s the point. You were not enough. That’s why I came to rescue you.

It is funny how, for me at least, accepting grace takes a much greater act of surrender than accepting condemnation. What is it in our human hearts that is so broken that it turns away these freely offered gifts, this breathing grace that waits at every moment to transform us? Why do we shrink from that? What are we afraid of?

I think I am afraid of a loss of control. It is so much easier to believe that we were meant to mend things, because that is in the field of the familiar. We get a false sense of security from the illusion of control. One thing I have learned is that in a sense a lot of our striving is a search to save ourselves. In a moment of bitter honesty, I had to admit to myself that in the past I have been obsessed with saving people because I felt that it was the only way to save myself from myself (if you followed that sentence first time through I applaud you, by the way). When I admit that there is absolutely nothing I personally can do to fix anything, that means a complete loss of control (“it seems honesty has finally got me to confess I can’t save anything”). And sometimes that can feel like dying.

Surrender. It’s like sitting back and letting every single thing you ever thought was secure shatter, holding onto only the belief that He will rebuild something better. When talking to people who are struggling with the Christian faith, I have found that this is perhaps the absolute hardest thing for people to accept. The reality is that when Jesus asked us to take up our crosses, He wasn’t just saying “come and suffer.” He was saying “come and die.”

I do not take kindly to that, if I am honest. I want to cling to my own concept of what it is to be good, I want to cling to my own sense of fulfillment, I want to cling to the picture of salvation that I have scratched out on the wall of my prison. Anything but letting go. Anything but admitting how needy I am.

I have found that complete surrender is different than we might think. Yes, at first maybe it will feel like dying, but only for a little while. Then it begins to feel a little like falling up... relentless, unstoppable motion, pulled towards the light out of the dark. When we surrender, we are drawn to God with a pull stronger than gravity. Grace is like that. It doesn’t give up. It keeps pulling, keeps working, untangling these shadows and straightening out the sunlight...

I am not enough. But Jesus is, and somehow He loved me enough to cover my inadequacy with His perfection. I fight so hard to try to gain something He already gave me, to deserve something that is by its very nature undeserved. Maybe it’s better to stop fighting. Maybe it’s better to let His voice speak above my noise. Maybe it’s better to let go, to fall up, closer and closer to the only One who holds salvation...

“You’re not guilty anymore, You're not filthy anymore. I love you, mercy is yours. You're not broken anymore, You're not captive anymore. I love you, mercy is yours...”
- Aaron Keyes

- Elraen -

Answered

2011-02-11T15:08:00.002-06:00

"I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?"
- Till We Have Faces, C.S. Lewis

There are so many questions. Questions about me, about other people, about pain, about joy, about hope, about loss, about grief, about my future, about my past. I have a tendency to feel a sense of hopelessness at the deafening silence that often seems to be the only answer to my questions.

I am not a stranger to the questions of pain. I would expect that if you are reading this and are older than maybe 8, you would be able to say something similar. Just about four years ago, I remember very vividly a day that I received a few messages that completely shattered me. My primary memory is locking myself in a closet and screaming over and over again the single word “why.” An immature reaction, perhaps, but I think the feeling lasts even when we're older.

Figuratively speaking, I was screaming that same question recently, for months. I have been asking God why I have failed Him so greatly, why so many people have to hurt, why the darkness just seems to get deeper. I came up with theories, and I read books-- lots of books, digging into the dusty pages and taking notes and analyzing theology. I listened through new songs and old songs, and I wrote a few of my own when the songs others had written didn’t say it right. Some nights-- most nights, by the time the lights went off-- I was too tired to ask anymore.

The past few weeks have been a journey, in many ways. I had learned in these past few months of questioning one thing and one thing alone: I am incapable of finding the answer to the question of pain. Answers could work for a while (“ignore it, it will go away”-- maybe for a day, an hour, but it always comes back), but they fell apart so fast.

I had a conversation with a friend a couple weeks ago that absolutely rocked my world. It reminded me of what I was missing.

And this is one of the most simple things imaginable, and maybe I am foolish for not holding to it. What I have come to understand is that all the theories about God, all the songs about God, all the books about God, all the friends speaking about God, all the service to God, all the beliefs I have about God... they cannot hold me together. Only God Himself can.

I can work and I can strive and I can cry and I can write. I can do things until my heart is sick and weary, but at the end of the day, what good is it? We spend so much time trying to scribble out a child’s drawing when God is begging us to let Him make us His masterpiece.

And I think it terrifies some people to think that maybe they won’t have answers because they’re looking for the wrong ones. In the book Till We Have Faces, there comes a point where the main character has lost absolutely everything, where they are stripped down to the bare essentials of honesty-- stripped away to the only question they’ve really been asking the whole time. And it is then and only then that the answer comes, as implied in my quote at the beginning of this post. The answer is Him, not something He tells us to do, not a theory, not a medicine or a person or a situation mended-- just God, in Himself, the face of Love.

There is the classic story of Job in the Bible. After all the theorizing of Job’s friends, after all the answers they gave him, after everything they threw at him, after all their rationalizing and searching... God does not give Job a theory or an explanation. God gives Job Himself. “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?” I tremble when I read those words. I tremble because it reminds me of the fact that the answer is greater than anything I ever could have imagined.

And I’ve tried to get around this in a million ways. I’ve hesitated over these blogs posts for years now, thinking I need to talk about God less directly to make them easier to relate to. I have searched and sung and written and bled until there was nothing left. And in the end, there is only one thing that makes all these broken things pull together, only one thing that holds me together after seeing my world fall apart, only one thing that still changes hearts. And that One Thing is always holding out His hands, crying out “come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”

Rest. I have found it again, where it was all along... not in anything I did or understood or reached for, not in anything anyone else did. Simply in being willing to turn my head towards Him and let Him fill my vision.

For He is indeed the answer. He is the Healer and the Comforter and the Rescuer, and He is not giving up, and He is not backing down, and His love is going to last longer than anything I have felt or done or experienced. He will remain even when everything else is lost.

And I’ve had a thousand chances I’ve missed, and I’ve spent a thousand nights hurting when He could have held me. But tonight I know-- I understand now. He is the one thing that I’ve been looking for. And that doesn’t mean a cure for situations... it means a constant, a focus, ground to stand on, even when nothing else is stable. It means Hope.

- Elraen -

“Did I arrange the light of your first day? Did I create the rhythm your heart makes? Could you believe when your candle starts to fade, I want to be the One that you believe could take it all away...”
- Disciple

New 2011 Layout

2011-02-08T18:19:00.003-06:00

So today I decided that I was tired of looking at the old layout. And then I started coding and playing around, and couldn't stop. So I spent about 4 hours on this instead of on studying for my Russian History test.

It has been almost exactly a year since I put up the last layout. Again, for the sake of keeping a record, here is my old layout:

[click for full-sized]
Even the profile picture was over a year old. Definitely time for a change.
This is also my first layout that has not been blue. Maybe the recent release of RED's album has gone to my head... regardless, I am a huge fan of the black/white/red color scheme.
I would love your feedback on this. It was somewhat hastily (and carelessly) done, so if there's a bug or a glaring error, please let me know.
Thanks for reading!- Elraen -

Yet to Come

2011-01-30T13:51:00.003-06:00

[I actually wrote this several weeks ago, but wasn't sure if I actually was going to post it. I decided to go ahead and do so. It's not entirely cohesive or coherent, because most of my thoughts have been so hard to make sense of recently, but I thought it might be worth sharing.]

Recently, I was talking with a friend who was staying with my family for a while. We were talking about our various college experiences, and the way that people have always told us that “your college years will be the best years of your life.” And we both joked that if this is as good as it gets, we would hate to see what comes after this.

At the time it was something to laugh about, but even as I laughed I was afraid. It’s a thought that has occurred to me over and over again— what if this really is as good as it gets? What if, from here on out, it’s all downhill? If that is the case then first of all, my life is really rather worthless, because I consider college to be the absolute worst thing that has ever happened to me. And if it’s only going to get worse? Better to give up, if that is the case. The temptation is to ask God what in the world He’s signed me up for, and why I wasn’t asked for my opinion on the matter.

And I think that’s a mindset not confined to myself, or even to college students in general. I think it’s something that occurs to people whenever they find themselves in a situation that’s supposed to be everything they hoped for, but instead still feels empty. I think it’s probable that a lot of people feel like that a few years into a job or even in relationships. We get used to the way things go, and we accept that it’s as good as it’s going to get. And sometimes that’s comforting because it means we don’t have to work for anything else, but I think a lot of the time it’s terrifying. For example, I’ve talked to countless teenagers who felt like they’d never get out of their house, that the family issues they were dealing with would not get better, that where they were would never change.

I think there are some flaws with that idea. I think that it assumes that we are helpless, first of all, and I also think that it leaves the very nature and character of God entirely out of the picture. He is not a God who takes into account only this moment or this season or this year. He is outside of time, and in His hands our lives are not a series of random highs and lows, but rather a song with verses and a chorus and a bridge and a break-down and a build-up. He sees it as that whole... and maybe some of the best moments are dependent on the lows coming first. The most hopeful songs I have ever heard don’t start out that way. You have to get to the bridge usually before you ever see it-- and that’s towards the end of the song.

More than that, I think it is also true that the constantly repeated theme that God works for our ultimate good (because He loves us) means that He never says “that was it. I’m done. Do the best you can now.” That’s not who He is or what He’s about.

And this applies even to the concept that when we become Christians, it is somehow the apex of who we are, right there. It’s like Jesus only died for us in that one moment. I lived that belief for a while, and it didn’t work. I have come to believe instead that the redemption is not just for the 16-year-old kid I was. The redemption is for the 19-year-old college student I am and the 30-year-old I will one day be. He redeemed every piece of us, every moment... because again, I don’t think He sees it in pieces, but rather He sees a whole. I don’t think that the idea that we are “fully known” means simply that God knows our personality.

Some of the most encouraging words I have ever heard are not the ones that tell me that now is the best it’s going to get, that I should suck it up and get over these things that keep me awake at night. The hope is what tells me that these moments are not forever, that there are better moments coming... Brian Reith captures it with the words “now is not forever.”

And so I am going to believe that God is still working, that He is still making things new, that, as Samwise Gamgee would put it, “it’s only a passing thing, this shadow.” Or, while we’re on that vein, I could quote Faramir: “it is but the damp of the first spring rain. I do not believe this darkness will endure.”

The best is yet to come. It’s the story, the song, that God has already written for you, and it’s not over. It’s still in progress, and you can’t see the whole of it. But God’s already seen the ending, and He seems to think it’s beautiful and worthwhile. And that is enough.

Be blessed.
- Elraen, Wandering Star -

And after all that we’ve been through, and after all we’ve left in pieces, I still believe our lives have just begun. Now the past can be outrun, and I know You are the reason-- I still believe the best is yet to come.
- RED

Snow (Shelter)

2011-01-07T12:18:00.003-06:00

Humans are funny individuals. We get life handed to us as a free gift, and in turn we offer God our love, which results in obedience. And then when He continues to shape our life— the life He gave us to begin with— we so often complain that it wasn't the way we thought it would be. A few weeks ago, with a sort of bitter smile (realizing exactly how childish it was even as I said it), I told God “when You called me to love people, this wasn't exactly what I had in mind.”

I went to Colorado to visit some of my dearest friends over my break from work. I was with my older brother and younger sister, as I usually am. We drove the 16 hours in a single day, which was an adventure in itself. We spent a lot of time in Northwest Texas, which is a very empty place. It's all straight lines and sky and silence. I had no idea what I was looking for out there, but I knew I was looking for something.

I was staying with one of the CP mentors, Mangy. Her house has become one of my favorite places in the world. I feel incredibly safe there, which is an unusual feeling. I felt like I was riding in on the wings of a storm. I was afraid of bringing darkness with me to settle into that house, but I'm really not sure I am big enough to cast a shadow over that place.

It was hard to get used to being there. It's hard every time, because I can never quite believe that I am lucky enough to be with friends, but this time it was hard in a different way. It highlighted for me exactly how isolated I had been, exactly how unhealthy some of my thinking was, and the fact that it had mostly been my choice. I had kind of forgotten that I had friends, and that they wanted to talk to me and interact with me. It was a little overwhelming to be reminded, but in a sense I think that's why I was going in the first place— to remember.

I have been fighting this idea of friendship, of community, of the kind of sacrificial love that I have talked about so often without ever understanding. One thing I have had to learn is that yes, sometimes touching other people hurts... but some things were meant to hurt, and some hurts are worth it.

As a necessary sidenote: this does not mean that we are supposed to dive headfirst into destructive relationships. I've tried that, and it's nowhere near as heroic as it sounds. The point I am trying to make is that those relationships that are destructive, or even those that are simply hard to maintain, do not invalidate the value of community.

I have a tendency to drag things around that I was never meant to pick up in the first place. One of the times when this hit home for me was when I was gathered with a lot of my friends for what we call a mini moot. I ended up going off on my own to sit in a dark room with my iPod for a while. This is the kind of thing I did all the time when I was younger, but I hadn't done that in years. I thought I had outgrown it, learned to look past myself more than that. Apparently not. Sometimes, if only for a few minutes, I am 16 again, because that is who I choose to be. Slightly sobering.

On Thursday, it snowed. Not the light, slow, melting snow we get every few years in Texas. It started snowing, and soon it was more like a storm. It was fascinating to see the cold feathers falling thick, clustering over trees and cars and sidewalks. Only minutes were necessary for it to stick, unlike the several hours needed in Texas. I decided I wanted to walk in it, since it is an opportunity I rarely have. So I bundled up in more layers than I've ever had on in my life and set off, singing.

I walked to areas I hadn't been to before. I reached a major street that was sloped (like most of the streets in the Springs are). More and more cars were stalling out or sliding into each other. There were about 20 cars stuck there in one big barricade as the snow continued to fall. I walked past small knots of people talking loud on cell phones. As I pressed on, I reached up to push my hair out of my eyes and found that it was frozen solid.

I had a lot of time for thinking, out in the snow by myself. One of the things I was realizing for the first time is that snow is more than I had thought it was. Before I have associated snow with innocence, joy, and beauty. When it comes to us in Texas, it feels that way. But here I saw what it is like when the snow freezes to ice and sends cars sliding away from firm ground. I felt the piercing cold of relentless wind and snow on my forehead and fingers, and thought about people who wouldn't have a warm place to go home to.

And it started to occur to me that sometimes the most beautiful things are also the most dangerous. Yes, snow is beautiful and somehow makes me hopeful of things washed white, but it is a great risk to even try to go out in it. Admiring it from a distance is the only way to stay safe... but then you don't see the way the snowflakes sit in their almost perfect complexity on your skin before burning away. You don't feel the touch on your face or hear it under your shoes.

It brings to mind a hike we took back in August. When standing on a rough rock precipice overlooking a spectacular view, I asked my friend Justin if the view was more beautiful or more terrifying. He responded that it was both. I added that all the best things are. The thought has stayed with me.

For fear of rambling, maybe I should wrap this up. I guess the point is that going to Colorado and spending time with some of the most beautiful people I have ever known did not so much teach me that I was safe. It taught me that some of the most beautiful stories are never written because we're too afraid they will be a tragedy... for that matter, some of the most beautiful stories are tragedies in places. Friendships are like that. I could choose to live all my life locked inside looking out a window... or else I could stand singing in the snow, freezing cold, skin burning, but alive.

All of this pointed out to me again how much everything is changing. As I said before, the moot in August absolutely and completely wrecked me, more so than any other event in my life aside from my initial decision to follow Christ. Everything after that has been the process of watching old habits and thought patterns burn away under the steady pressure of truth. It's not a fun process. Actually, it hurts and makes me feel so tired and numb sometimes... and yet somehow it's beautiful, like being made clean. Like walking in the snow.

- Elraen -

If our hearts are turned to stone, there is hope— we know the rocks will cry out. And the tears aren't ours alone, let them fall into the hands that hold us. Come away from where you're hiding, set aside the lies that you've been living... in the shelter of each other we will live.

- Jars of Clay

You Tell Me to Live

2011-01-01T02:26:00.002-06:00

I am spending the turning of a year’s page far from home for the second time in a row. A year ago right now I was in a hotel in Nashville. Now I am in a friend’s house in Colorado Springs. This seems to help to mark the transition.

Occasionally there is a year that seems to be marked, gilded with fire and with ice, crashing like a meteor on the shell of my world. 2010 was one of those years. So much of me wants to call it one of the worst years of my life, and yet I can’t make myself do it, because I can only think of one other year that has ever impacted me more.

If I were to describe 2010 in a single phrase, it would be “the year that I learned I was wrong about everything.” About friends, about myself, about God, about faith, about the very concept of what it is to be alive... I was so completely wrong.

Some of the absolute worst things that have ever happened to me all managed to cram themselves in together in one year. I had to fall hard enough to figure out that I had lost my footing in the first place.

I have found myself weary and worn over the past two months, abandoning the principles I have fought so hard to uphold-- ideas of community, that honesty is important, that it is possible to be safe with people. I tried to find my way back to where I once was, the person who once could easily go days and weeks without a full conversation, who would commonly sit alone in a room for hours on end. I tried wandering paths that once owned me. I tried to find the start, maybe with some idea in my head that if I could do that, I could figure out who I was again. And yet it didn’t work. I had grown too much for the old molds to contain the pieces of my soul.

Throw myself back into the ocean, and I’ve lived to tell the tale. Throw myself back into the ocean, but it wouldn’t take me back-- no it wouldn’t take me back.

- Quietdrive

I looked forward to 2010 with hope. Some of the greatest things I had hoped for came true. Almost all of the things I feared most also came true. As I sit now in the early hours of 2011, I do not hope. I do not dream. I do not even fear anymore. I grit my teeth to hold inside the song burning still in my lungs, and I hold on with a white-knuckled determination that will not give up, even when I beg myself to.

And I am beginning to realize how much of faith feels like this. I will not give up, even when I am not particularly sure how to stand up anymore.

The temptation to regret parts of 2010-- most of it, in fact-- is extreme. If I could erase the first eight months and then the last two, I would be a much happier person. I have not known regret like this in three years. And yet part of me also recognizes how useless that would be. I grew more than I could ever have imagined. Yes, maybe that was mostly because I saw so many things fall apart, and in the process learned so much about the only thing that is whole. But if that is what it takes to break through this iron shell around my heart, so be it.

Heaven knows, I’ve tried to find a cure for the pain. Oh my Lord! To suffer like You do-- it would be a lie to run away.

- Jon Foreman

I will not regret, for to do so is to deny the reality of forgiveness. Where I go from here is uncharted. I stood singing on the side of a street in a snow storm yesterday. In the frigid cold and angry wind and the blowing white powder ghosts, I began to remember exactly how vulnerable humanity is. I began to remember how useless all of this if we choose to believe we were meant to rule our kingdoms alone.

I don’t believe in friendships. I don’t believe my life will amount to anything. I don’t believe there will be anything redeeming about 2011. I don’t believe in hope. But I am beginning to want to believe again.

Perhaps what I want most is to be alone. And that is the exact thing that I am coming to understand is not possible. And it makes me feel angry and helpless and terrifyingly human.

New beginnings. The idea of trying again just makes me feel inconsolably tired right now. And yet there is this heartbeat, this song, this pulse, that will not give up-- this idea of things that outlast me, this idea of hope and love and light pulsing behind the tormented skin of a broken world. Tomorrow will come, a sunrise for every night. And so I hold on. And so I choose to live.

When dark clouds cover the sky like there's no hope, You are the light. You tell me to live.

And when You heal my broken wings, yes You heal my everything. You tell me to live...

You tell me to live.

- The Rocket Summer

May you know the hope of new beginnings. May you know what it is to hold on. Thank you for staying with me through another year, another chapter. The road goes ever on and on...

- Elraen -

Best of 2010

2010-12-23T13:21:00.004-06:00

2010 was an interesting year. More on that in a later post, perhaps. I saw a lot of people and a lot of places and a LOT of bands. I’m posting this now because I probably won’t have time later, which means that the last few days of 2010 (which will be spent in Colorado) won’t get included in this. Unfortunately, since I already know I can expect those days to be awesome.

I think it's good to look back at the cool things that happened. I think it reminds us that things like this can and will happen again.

Feel free to steal some or all of these categories for your own blog/facebook, by the way. I love hearing other people look back and remember as well.

First things first...

10 Things I Set Out To Do in 2010: (as mentioned in my 2009 blog post)
1. Learn to drive - Done
2. Learn how to use photoshop - Done
3. Go to less concerts and work more so I can save to buy a car - ...totally failed the first part (I saw more than twice as many bands this year). The rest of it (working more and saving for a car) has gone great.
4. See Switchfoot in concert - Done!
5. Learn to play guitar - Done!
6. See as many of my amazing friends as possible - Done
7. Be a better, more accessible older sister to my siblings - Done
8. Learn to love with Jesus's love, not my own - I probably failed even more spectacularly at this in 2010 than in 2009.
9. Get to know more people at school - Done
10. Let go of the fear of failure - Totally failed this one too.

The 10 Best [Or Most Significant] Events of 2010:
1. CleanPlace Moot 2010, August
2. Switchfoot and The Almost show, October 9
3. Tenth Avenue North show, September 22
4. Disciple show, March 4
5. Jon Foreman solo show, April 1
6. Shalana’s visit, January
7. Skillet show with Anywhere and Mikayla, July 31
8. The Great Snowfall, February 11 and 12
9. Getting my guitar, October 27
10. The Fern family’s two visits

10 Random Specific Moments:
1. Stephen Christian (lead singer of Anberlin) making my picture his facebook profile picture and then writing on my wall to compliment my pictures
2. Getting a high five from Drew Shirley at the end of the Switchfoot show
3. That night at the moot when Joy, Shalana, and I were so sleep deprived that everything we said was completely illogical and somehow completely hilarious
4. Walking around Stone Mountain park with my Opa
5. Being roped in to work merch for Disciple while waiting in line for doors to open
6. Nerding with Daniel (bass player for Hawk Nelson) about Jon Foreman and Switchfoot
7. Driving back from Sixflags with Flynn, Mercy, and Anywhere in middle of the night, getting lost, hallucinating, and talking about the most random things
8. Lying in a puddle with Nia, Jordan, and Angel, stargazing (well, the puddle part wasn’t so great, but everything else was)
9. Having Caleb over for dinner at the end of the Spring semester and watching him explain “melodramatic” to my youngest brother by performing a prolonged, donut-related death scene on the neighbor’s trampoline
10. The campfire at the moot

The 10 Favorite Albums of 2010:
1. Of Men and Angels, The Rocket Summer
2. Dark is the Way, Light is a Place, Anberlin
3. The Light Meets the Dark, Tenth Avenue North
4. Horseshoes and Handgrenades, Disciple
5. Life, Scars, Apologies, Since October
6. Disambiguation, Underoath
7. Pieces of a Real Heart, Sanctus Real
8. Vagabonds, The Classic Crime
9. Me in Motion, Me in Motion
10. For Those Who Wait, Fireflight
(This was absurdly hard. So many good records this year! The top 5 runners-up would be The Chase by Manafest, Who Can Know It? by Showbread, Untouchable by Before Their Eyes, The World is a Thorn by Demon Hunter, and Satellites and Sirens’ self-titled debut.)

The 10 Best Places I Visited in 2010:
1. Manitou Springs, Colorado (it was totally awesome, even with the hippies and druggies)
2. Bear Trap Ranch, Colorado
3. That rad little Starbucks in Nacogdoches
4. Stone Mountain, Georgia
5. Sixflags Over Texas
6. The Prophet Bar venue in Dallas (the small room, which is actually clean, not the big one)
7. The Starbucks in Terrel where we always stop when picking people up from the airport
8. The park with the fountains in Shreveport, LA
9. House of Blues, Dallas (whatever else you can say about the atmosphere, it’s a cool venue)
10. Mangy’s house (yes, it gets its own entry)

The 10 Best Things About School in 2010:
1. My professors
2. Music in chapel
3. The February day when it snowed epic amounts and we made a snow pac-man
4. Hanging out and talking with Caleb and Basil at chai parties
5. Conversations (this past semester has been the first one where I actually had those. Radical concept)
6. Prayer and praise
7. Classes where I can enjoy learning rather than seeing it as an obligation
8. Going to see the opera broadcast (and eating Mexican fast food while dressed up)
9. The English department, both students and faculty
10. The library-- especially my amazing supervisor

10 Awesome People I Met for the First Time in 2010:
1. Yukioh
2. Raine
3. Mimsy
4. Kalessin
5. Mikayla
6. Heather
7. Jon Foreman (yes, musicians count)
8. Kevin Young
9. Soul Glow Activator
10. Amanda

The 10 Songs that were the Most Special to Me in 2010:
1. Dare You to Move, Switchfoot
2. September, Daughtry
3. The Shadow Proves the Sunshine, Switchfoot
4. Believe, Skillet
5. She Says (The Black-eyed Blues), Switchfoot (though it’s not technically released or even officially recorded yet)
6. Dear X (You Don’t Own Me), Disciple
7. On Fire, Switchfoot
8. The Cure for Pain, Jon Foreman
9. Times, Tenth Avenue North
10. Storm, Lifehouse
(Also a hard one. Runners-up would be Thank the Watchmaker (Acoustic) by And Then There Were None, Rebirthing by Skillet, How He Loves by David Crowder, No One Really Wins by Copeland, and Invisible by Disciple.)

10 Good Books I Read in 2010:
1. Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller (re-read)
2. The Space Trilogy by C.S. Lewis
3. The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis
4. The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis
5. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (10th complete read through)
6. Stuff Christians Like by Jon Acuff
7. Drops Like Stars by Rob Bell
8. The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis (re-read)
9. A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis
10. Miracles by C.S. Lewis (still in progress)
(It’s a little weird that half of these books are Lewis books. It’s even weirder that I’ve read more than half of them within the last week.)

10 Miscellaneous Things I Learned in 2010:
1. I am not a savior.
2. I am in fact human, and can’t accomplish infinitely more than other humans, no matter how hard I try.
3. Surrender (the process of letting go of ourselves and our ideas and our wants) is vital, painful, and at time feels impossible, and yet is the only way to experience grace.
4. At the end of the day, music can only mean as much as the intent behind it.
5. Love is closer than we think at any given moment. We just have to be willing to say yes. Usually, the only thing holding me back from peace is me.
6. What we happen to feel in a given moment of time is not eternal, and feeling alone should certainly not ever dictate our relationship with God.
7. We cannot make a mistake too big for God to fix.
8. Faith is not just about believing that God is. It’s about believing that He is actively involved in your situation, no matter what it is, and He is going to bring beauty in ways you could not possibly imagine. Maybe a better way to say it is that faith is weak if it only believes that God can act in situations outside of yourself. It’s easy to say “God is strong,” since there is no consequence to that-- that is easy faith. It’s much harder to say “my life is falling to pieces, but He will hold it together according to His love and His faithful character,” and then act as if He will. That is the kind of faith I want.
9. Pride can disguise itself in a thousand clever ways-- even in pain, and especially in insecurity.
10. Sometimes to love somebody means to let go. And I don’t mean to stop loving them; that’s contradictory. Sometimes love means abandoning our control or our right or our desire to own pieces of a person’s life.

11 Goals for 2011:
1. Meet Skillet (seriously, I know it’s shallow, but I’ve waited 3 ½ years already)
2. Get a decent internship
3. Buy a car
4. Write more poetry and songs
5. Learn to play electric guitar
6. Get involved with something at school that is not going to class or going to work
7. Get songs written and polished to the point where I can record and upload them
8. Find a way to get over this absurd leg injury so I can run again
9. Read more
10. Keep in contact with more friends better
11. Find a better balance between work, school, family, and friends

High and Low

2010-12-15T14:27:00.005-06:00

"I don't deserve it, but grace is attached to my shadow. It follows me wherever I go reminding me that I'm loved when I don't love myself. It corrects me when I'm out of line yet then pulls me in to give me a loving embrace. It's sometimes hard for me to understand because it's so unlike me."
- Bryce Avary

“'Grace is high AND low.' The simplicity of that truth always speaks to me. This is the nature of God's grace. This is found in the highs and the lows – on the peaks and in the valleys. This truth is so difficult to accept in it's entirety: that fools like us have been 'given innocence again.'”
- Tim Foreman

I am beginning to wonder if I ever understood grace. If I did, I am not sure I would be where I am now. I think I did understand it to begin with, and even a few months ago I may have understood it (or at least, as much as any human ever can-- perhaps “accept” is a better word than “understand” here). But when I lock myself up in my own head and refuse to listen to any outside voices, maybe it’s natural that my failures would be louder. The failures are mine; the grace definitely is not.

I live a life that looks very good from the outside, if we look at facts alone. I have two jobs that pay decently. I am going to an extremely high-quality University, making very good grades. I have a massive network of friends. I am able to do a lot of things (photography, web design, graphic design, writing, play two instruments, so forth), and though I am not necessarily good at any of them, I am at the very least competent.

So perhaps it would seem odd that I am still so desperately incomplete. Four years ago, I never would have dreamed I would have made as much progress as I have now. And yet I need grace as much now as I did then-- perhaps more, because as my world grows I need more grace to cover all of it.

Lately this issue has come down on me a lot harder than usual, because I have tried to change so many situations and cannot. I get desperate and try harder, but it’s like throwing myself against a brick wall-- the wall doesn’t budge, but I come away bruised. And it makes me wonder why I bother trying at all if I can’t change anything. How do I love people if the purpose is not to help them (since apparently I can’t help them)?

I have had a lot of time for thinking, now that I am done with finals. I have read three C.S. Lewis books and started on a fourth in the last 48 hours, which helps. One thing I had to admit to myself is that for the past few years, 99.9% of my interaction with people has been based on a simple principle: what I think they need. Someone needs me to smile, so I smile. Someone needs silence, so I am quiet. Someone needs me to talk and appear confident, so I do so.

I am not sure anymore that this is right. First of all, I could pretend (and have) that it is selfless, but it’s not. It is pretending that I can truly fulfill any kind of need in someone, which is very self-centered and also impossible. There is no more of me than the people around me-- to try to give them part of me to make them whole is foolish, and will only end with one or both of us still incomplete. The only way any sense of completion can occur is if something from outside, Someone who is more, comes in and fills the holes. For me to assume I can fulfill any kind of need-- indeed, to pretend that I can even understand what someone really needs at the core of their being-- is a form of intense, sickening arrogance.

And yet in spite of this difficulty we are called to love. I am beginning to wonder if this is less about reaching down and trying to pull someone up as it is about crawling beside them, lending an arm to support them if necessary. There is nothing else I can do. God is the only one who can do any lifting, because He is the only one who is really higher anyway.

And yet I am not content with that. I don’t know if it’s habit or if I am simply a fool, but I can’t accept that it is not my responsibility to change someone. I spend hours thinking about it until I begin to go mad. The result is that as of late, everything has brought condemnation. I go to school and feel awful because my grades and my accomplishments make people feel inadequate and intimidated by me. I go to work and feel certain that there is something I’m supposed to be saying to the patrons or my coworkers that I am not saying. I talk to my friends and if they have had so much as a bad day I hate myself for not being able to turn it around.

Home is the worst right now. Every broken behavior I observe in my siblings is a direct reflection of my failure. Yes, they love me, but that’s not what I want. I want them to understand who God is, and in response to love each other. I don’t care if they hate me; they used to, and I know how to handle that. I would give up everything I have just to get them to love each other for even one day.

And of course I know the answer to all this. I know the theory backwards and upside down and inside out. I have to accept grace. I have to accept that God is strong in my weakness. I have to accept that I cannot change people, but that God working through me might still be able to touch their lives. There was a time, not so long ago, when I did accept this. I’m not sure why I can’t now.

I have a friend who has known me for most of my teen years. This friend is one of the major reasons why I can even grasp the concept of grace, because he has a habit of eternally giving me kindness I don’t deserve in spite of the fact that he knows me very well. This has baffled me over and over, but he doesn’t seem to want to stop offering grace even when I get mad at him for doing so, so I’ve decided it’s better to give up and accept it. This is just a tiny, incomplete reflection of how God is.

In a similar way, as I have been moving to my new room over the past few days, I have been struck with something fascinating. I was cleaning out my desk and found that probably 75% of the things I found were things I had been given by people I love-- people who love me, as baffling as that is. If I am honest, there were other things on my desk too, things I sent through the shredder because I couldn’t stand what they reminded me of. And yet for everything I shredded, there were at least 20 things I had been given out of love... notes and pictures and knitted things and more than I could mention. It also struck me that most of the people who have poured into me most are the ones who I have done a terrible job of loving.

And maybe that’s part of getting over all of this mess-- looking at the love letters God has sent me, not the wads of shredded paper from my own attempts to love. It’s not about me or what I think, and it’s definitely not about what I feel. If I say I believe in grace and then refuse to accept it when I actually need it, then I am either a liar or a fool. Grace is high and low. No, it’s not an equation that makes sense. But, as I quote so often when people ask me about grace... “the beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair.” No, grace is not fair, and no, it doesn’t make sense. But it is beautiful... and maybe it is worth trying to understand.

“In the economy of mercy, I am a poor and begging man. In the currency of grace is where my song begins. In the colors of Your goodness, in the scars that mark Your skin-- in the currency of grace is where my song begins. These carbon shells, these fragile dusty frames, house canvases of souls. We are bruised and broken masterpieces, but we did not paint ourselves. And where will I find You?”
- Switchfoot

- Elraen -

[Sidenote: This is one of those posts I was hesitant to share. But I figured that only being honest when it doesn’t cost me anything really isn’t honesty at all. And perhaps as a disclaimer, I have no idea if there is any truth in this post aside from that these are honestly my thoughts, which may or may not be correct. I have edited this post like a million times.]

My Favorite Disease

2010-12-04T12:41:00.004-06:00

A couple years back, I picked up a record titled The Flame in All of Us by Thousand Foot Krutch. I listened to it a lot before I ever read through the liner notes (and yes, I do read the liner notes of pretty much every album I buy). I found an extremely interesting paragraph written before the lyrics of one of the songs. Here is a part of what Trevor had written:

“The idea of having a ‘favorite disease’ is obviously a little contradictory... A person’s passion and the thing that drives them can be given many names. I like to refer to it as a God given passion, and a blessing, and not something I have achieved, or obtained. If you’re passionate about something, it drives you, and sometimes even consumes you. If something consumes you, than other things in life, even if only for a brief period of time, take a back seat to that thing. In my case, music is one of the things I’m passionate about, and at times it has consumed me. In those times I remember feeling like the thing I loved so much, and have always used as a tool to heal, confide in, and share my life with, was actually killing me. It’s a very confusing feeling to have when you’ve spent your whole life devoted to a gift.”

I can’t predict how meaningful this post will be to anyone. This is more my confused ramblings than anything else, but I felt like I needed a platform for it aside from the many thousands of words that have been written in my journal. You’re probably all tired of reading my thoughts on music by now, but it's so integral to me that it's a given that it would have a strong presence here.

The first time I read Trevor’s words in the liner notes, they didn’t make sense to me. But about two months ago I remembered them, dug through my piles of CDs, pulled out the liner notes and re-read them. And it was like a beautiful punch in the chest, that shaky and somehow peaceful moment of realizing “someone else gets it.”

A week ago I went to see The Rocket Summer (a one-man band created by Bryce Avary). It was a very different show than what I usually attend-- it was mostly acoustic, and it was a special tour where Bryce was purposefully booking small venues and then playing a bunch of his old songs for his fans. We were packed into a tiny club on a cool late November night, and we were all singing along so loud that at moments Bryce was drowned out. He was recording for a live album. I wonder if they’ll be able to use any of the audio-- it will be all us.

There is something about those moments. Sort of like when Bryce leans back and sings out “And when You heal my broken wings, You heal my everything. You tell me to live.” It’s something that feels a lot like hope, though I’m still figuring out why.

Recently part of one of my calluses chipped off. I started playing guitar, and due to the lack of protection, my finger burned. I used to get lots of blisters and be nearly bleeding by the end of my long guitar sessions, but now usually I never even feel the strings anymore. Now I had a raised blister again, and the familiar burning was back. I played for nearly an hour anyway.

And I had a thought as I did so. I think sometimes we need to lose the calluses. I have started to pray that my fingertips will never get so callused that they cease to burn when they brush against music. And that’s because music is beautiful, and it is a gift, and when God uses something to show me more of who He is, I should never, ever take that for granted.

The past few weeks I’ve been losing myself again. I have looked at my life and seen that perhaps every situation I am involved in would be better if I were not there. I have seen how greatly I have failed, and I have faced the consequences of some incredibly foolish decisions I made in the past year. And in the midst of this, I find myself crawling back again and again and curling up inside the melodies. I come alive when I hear You singing...

I have no idea why music has taken such strong roots in my life. I don’t know what God will do with it, because my life is so completely directionless right now. And there have been times when I have been completely consumed by it, which is not healthy either. Sometimes I wonder if it’s all wrong, and if I am a fool for even pretending I could share in the beauty I see in the songs. But then I remember nights like last Saturday, singing and hoping with a few hundred other beating hearts, and I realize that no matter where I go from here or how many times I do things wrong, there is still the blessing and the gift. Sometimes I need to focus more on the fact that grace is real, rather than the reality of how little I deserve it.

In the past few months I have heard some incredible songs sung in a variety of places. I have been in well-lit churches with families and kids singing along. I have been in dirty clubs surrounded by drunk 20-somethings trying to make sense of life. I have been in massive auditoriums working with huge crews to make everything fall together. I have stood on blurry street corners in middle of the night after shows, still drowning in the wonder of songs.

One of the shows I haven’t talked about here is the Anberlin show, which was on September 29. My sister and I stood in one of the most famous venues in Dallas to hear some of our very favorite songs live for the first time. There were a few drunk girls on one side of us, some cynical teenagers behind us, some crowd surfers who got kicked out, and some guys on the balcony who got into a fist fight half way through. That probably doesn’t sound like much fun to most of you, if I had to guess. But it was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen-- not because of the audience. Not because of the broken glass and spilled beer that we walked over to get out. Not because of the noise. It was because as I listened to Stephen’s piercingly beautiful vocals drift over and under and around us, I saw something amazing... I saw God as being bigger than I’d ever imagined. He was there, in the mess, in the ugliness. He was singing and reaching and moving.

Music is and always will be my favorite disease. These blisters on my finger tips remind me of the pain that passion so often requires and the wonder that makes it worthwhile. Working out a relationship with something so powerful, something that has become such a huge part of my life, is never easy... but it is a gift. And I am so, so grateful for these things that move us and make us hope. It is not a bad thing to cling to the things that make us come alive.

"Still we have our common ground, which can never be annulled: to sing of the One who made us both, for He is wonderful. He is wonderful..."

- Dear Music, Showbread

- Elraen -

The Shadow Proves the Sunshine

2010-11-08T23:19:00.002-06:00

Last week, it was a few hours past sunset on one of the coldest night of the Fall thus far. I was working on homework after a long day at school when I got a text from my 15-year-old brother, informing me of a great photography opportunity that I could see from my University’s campus. I am usually hesitant to head back onto campus after I’ve left for the day, and it was raining and cold outside. Despite these hindrances, eventually my artistic curiosity won, and I pulled on my hoodie and set out.

My brother had informed me that the nearby chemical plant had its torch lit, which resulted in lighting up the entire south eastern corner of the sky. I walked all the way across campus to the pond near the soccer fields to get a good view. My brother had been correct in his assessment of the sight. The torch’s light was catching the ragged bits of storm clouds, kindling them orange and yellow and red. It looked like a brilliant sunrise at 10:00 at night.

I stood by the pond in the wind, trying to shield my lens from the rain in order to get some decent pictures. After a while I just stood and watched it with the stillness of awe.

As I turned away from the glow and headed home under the chill glare of streetlights, I started processing some thoughts about what I’d seen. I stood there like a traveler wondering at a marvel, taking pictures of the light in the sky. And yet the sun rises every morning and produces much the same effect. More than that, I was marveling at one corner of the sky being lit up, and yet during the day the sky is lit up all over constantly. So what made the light amazing enough to trek across campus in the rain to bask in its glow? It was the fact that the sky was lit up at night.

I am not very wise-- I am in fact an antisocial college kid who has an unhealthy obsession with coffee and converse and hoodies. I am not a theologian or a philosopher, and most of the time I’m not even a good friend. But occasionally I have moments where I hear an echo of an idea or concept that seems beautiful to me.

I think that sometimes light is like that-- the light that is hope, love, grace, God. We’re surrounded by it so often. It presses against our skin at every moment, all around us, inescapable. We have to shut ourselves away in dark corners to hide from it, and still it slides through the cracks in our closet doors. And yet we take it for granted. We accept that the light is supposed to be there. It’s not until the darkness falls that the appearance of light is marvelous, indeed almost miraculous.

And it shouldn’t be this way. I think that if I was wise, then I would delight in hope and I would praise my God simply because He is. His light is around me so often, and yet I rarely run to it except when the darkness falls and I realize how desperately I need it. And sometimes I do praise God when life is “good,” because it can be easy to understand the brightness of the sunlight when it is full on your face. But the way I praise God in the light is different than the way I praise Him in the dark. In the light I am more willing to thank God, and less willing to surrender. In the dark I am more willing to surrender (because it becomes a last resort and a final necessity), and less willing to thank Him. But I would argue that the character of light isn’t different depending on the time of day or its surroundings.

Here I go into territory that I cover often, and yet still often need to repeat to myself. Sometimes I think we have to step into the night and watch God light up the sky to really understand how powerful light is. Contrast can show us so much about the character of both light and shadow. Sometimes the contrast is required, because we can’t see at all otherwise.

The past three months have been the best three months of my life. That is not something I would say lightly. It is also not a conclusion that many people would draw. The interesting thing about growing stronger is that it sometimes means being given heavier burdens to carry than before. I don’t say that the past three months have been beautiful due to an absence of pain. That would be absolutely absurd. I have known some of the deepest heartache of my life in the past three months-- enough at times to make me sick and weak and weary, awake at 4:00 a.m., surrounded and afraid. Enough to prompt me to spend hours praying through the piano keys because all my words ran dry. The first night I got my guitar, we stayed up through dark and bitter hours together, finding songs to make sense of a world eternally caving in. And yet I have come to understand that “easier” does not always mean better, and for that matter “happy” does not always mean better. In the midst of the chaos in the shadows I have fixed my eyes on a light bright enough to set the night sky on fire. And that has changed everything. Even as the battles I tried so hard to win and the human standards I tried so hard to achieve crumble to dust under my weary hands, there is something in me that shines brighter and brighter as all the rubble and obstructions fall out of the way. There is a joy and a peace in that reality that has the power to completely redefine who we are... and so it has.

There is a Switchfoot song that I have listened to nearly every day for the past month. It has become the undercurrent of this semester for me.

Sunshine, come and be my mother, sunshine, come and help me sing. My heart is darker than these oceans, my heart is frozen underneath. We are crooked souls trying to stay up straight, dry eyes in the pouring rain when the shadow proves the sunshine, the shadow proves the sunshine. Two scared little runaways, hold fast ‘til the break of daylight when the shadow proves the sunshine, the shadow proves the sunshine.

And this is all is a part of a concept that began to be real to me a few months ago... praising God because of who He is, regardless of whether it’s day or night. Seeing that there is in fact a light bright enough to burn through our skies, even when they are darkest (behind all clouds there are stars at night). In fact I might argue that the light’s strength is proved best in the midst of the darkest and most clinging shadows.

Maybe an important closing note is that I think we need the day as well as the night, and that’s not something I’m trying to deny. I’ve seen some beautiful daylight over the past few months, brighter than what I had imagined possible before. But I think sometimes we as humans desperately need the reminder that the shadow has a purpose. I think we need the reminder that the light is still bright enough to break up our storm-torn night skies. I think we need the reminder to look up and see it when it does so.

In the words of a friend... “the darkness should only be there to show the brightness of the light.”

Let my shadows prove the sunshine.

- Elraen -

You Don't Own Me

2010-10-24T19:48:00.003-05:00

This is one of those blog posts that I’m really afraid to post, because I’m afraid of how it will be received. But then, for me to not post it out of fear would go against the whole point.

This summer I saw a movie that a lot of other people saw. It was a movie called Inception. I'm not giving away spoilers, but one of the characters in the movie struggles with and is held captive by something in his head, and the result is that he nearly loses everything. One of the major things I walked out of that movie with was the simple thought “what am I owned by?” And that question is the starting point of this post.

I have been very involved in various fan cultures for years now. That has had some good things come from it, and also some very, very hard things. One of the hard things has been that I have felt so much pressure so often to like certain bands and songs, to act a certain way at shows, and to be a certain person when it came to music in general. Recently, after years of this pressure, I cracked. In my desperate scramble to be the person I believed people in the music community wanted me to be, I lost myself. And so I stopped reading or posting in the fan communities I’d been involved in. For over a month, I didn’t listen to Skillet anymore, or Thousand Foot Krutch, or Flyleaf, or Disciple, or Relient K, or RED. Every time I tried, I hated myself because my head was screaming with everyone else’s opinions of the songs and the way they talked about the bands and the way I was supposed to feel about it.

As a note of clarification, this is not something I blame on my friends. I have met some pretty amazing people through music. Actually, all of the friends I have made over the past two years have been through music. The problem I’m addressing here is a mindset in me that caused me to react in the wrong way.

So it was a little weird to be going to a Thousand Foot Krutch and Disciple show, this past Friday. I hadn’t listened to either in nearly two months, even though there was a time when I would listen to both every day. We listened to their songs on the way to Dallas, and I found that I still remembered all the words. At least I could sing along at the show.

We got there after some fun times on the tight one way streets of downtown Dallas and stood in line, waiting for the doors to open. I was enjoying talking with my siblings and my friend who were there with me. I was texting with my good friend Liz. Then I got a text from twitter.

On a whim, before the show I’d synced the twitter accounts for all the bands I would be seeing that night to my phone. I usually don’t get anything from twitter to my phone, because I don’t have unlimited texting, but for whatever reason that night I thought it could be fun in case the bands said anything about the show as it progressed. Disciple had posted on their twitter that they really needed someone to work merch.

At first I wasn’t going to say yes because I was afraid I wouldn’t do a good job, but the hesitation was brief. I realized that if there was anything that could make the night go well, it would be serving... this was a once in a lifetime opportunity to give back, even in a small way, to a band that had made a huge impact on my life for the past few years. So I responded that I could volunteer, and was told to go to the merch table as soon as I got in.

It was so weird and random that I didn't tell my siblings about it for several minutes after the exchange. I had no idea how to feel about it. Usually I have weeks of warning before doing merch. This time I had 15 minutes.

When doors open, I went and found Amanda (who runs their merch and is married to Andrew, one of the guitarists). I got trained in about 2 minutes as people were already coming in and buying things. Then it was just jumping in and helping where I could.

It was insane, but it was amazingly fun. Amanda is possibly one of the nicest people I have met in my life, and that made it even better. I got to talk to dozens of people as they came up to buy stuff. Because it was a club show, merch was just at the back of the room, so I had a great view of the stage as Ivoryline played. After that, Amanda came back to the table and told me she would watch it so I could go out on the floor for Disciple.

I hurried out and found a spot that was as close to the stage as possible while still leaving a good escape route so I could get back to the table when Disciple finished up. And then the music started.

This blog post can’t really deal with everything that happened then. As it is, I am not mentioning some of the most major issues I was carrying, because this blog isn’t the place for them. But there are a few definite things that need to be said.

While Disciple played Worth the Pain, I closed my eyes and in the midst of the crowd I sank to my knees on the hard, grimy concrete. The crowd pressed all around me. I couldn’t see the stage. I could only hear the music, the words drifting over and around me. And as I talked to God, ignoring everyone else around me, it started to occur to me that I was letting myself be owned by some very odd things.

I am not owned by what bands I’m a fan of. I am not owned by music. I am not owned by the opinions of any other person. I am not owned by the person I have been. I am not owned by my school or my degree. These are not the things that define me. They are all things that are going to pass away, things that won’t last forever. They didn’t create me, so why would I trust them to tell me who I am?

Some day there will be no more CDs, no more iPods, no more shows, no more Skillet or Switchfoot or Disciple or TFK, no more drama, no more twitter, no more facebook. The layers of darkness will be peeled back, and the guns and blades and bottles will shatter. I won’t have paychecks or papers to write then, and I won’t be thinking about bands.

The only thing in the world that will matter then will be the fact that I am loved unconditionally by God, and that I love Him in return.

That’s it. That is the only thing in this whole world that’s going to last. And if that is the case, then why in the world would I think that all that other stuff matters? It’s all going to burn away. The message of the music will remain, but the music itself will not, at least not as I hear it now. The music only has as much value as God breathes into it anyway. And the bottom line is that even if all these bands I love had never been formed, and even if I had never connected in the relationships I have, and even if I had never written a poem or a story or taken a photograph... God would still be the same God. He is not defined by something as insignificant as human opinion. We can’t define Him, but His love can define us. And I am so prone to forget that.

I went back to the merch table after Disciple finished playing. My eyes were tear stained and my hair was messy from headbanging, but I felt peaceful. And that in itself was a miracle. It was enough that I could totally enjoy TFK’s set as I watched from behind the merch table. Another volunteer had joined me by now, and I had a wonderful time chatting with her and enjoying the music with her.

After the bands got off the stage, there was the usual extreme flurry of activity as people hurried to buy merch. It was particularly fast because the bands were running a very tight schedule. TFK started signing in the corner. Initially Disciple wasn’t going to sign, but they ended up doing a very informal signing outside. Amanda had already gone to get something signed for me, but I asked if I could run quickly to say hi to the guys. She very graciously said yes.

I ran (literally) outside and waited for a few minutes. Then when I got a chance I stepped up and said hi to the guys. They were all incredibly kind, as always, and they made me smile. I chatted with them for a few minutes before running back inside. TFK was done signing for other people then, so I got to go and get something signed and talk to them for a few minutes before going to help Amanda pack up Disciple’s merch.

Here’s the weird thing: I actually talked to the guys. I am usually awful at talking to bands (see my last post for a great example... though admittedly, that was a special case). Maybe it’s because I’d met both of these bands before. Maybe it’s because I had the automatic connection due to the fact that they knew I was working the tables. But I think the greatest factor was that I didn’t feel anymore like what I said and did would somehow forever own me. It was amazing to get to talk to Kevin, Micah, Israel, Andrew, Trent, Ty, Joel, Steve, and Trevor, and they were incredibly kind and accepting of me, which meant so much. But even if they hadn't been kind, it would have been alright... I am owned by something so much greater. And that was something I learned that night-- not necessarily because of the music, but because of Someone else singing through it, bringing words to life.

And the aftermath of this has been interesting. I can listen to the bands I love again... it’s been so amazing to finally be able to enjoy Skillet again. But it’s almost like I’m hearing it all for the first time. I look at bands differently now, and for the first time I don't feel like I'm somehow unworthy to talk to bands. I honestly can’t say anymore that I have a favorite band... instead, there are truths (the truth of love, of hope, of redemption) that I love. I seek to live those truths, whether that means hearing them in songs at a show, or hearing them in the quiet moments by myself in some back corner of the library where I work, or echoing them when I take a moment to love someone who most people would walk past. All these moments are equally valuable. And all this isn't about loving music less-- it's about loving the God who makes it beautiful more.

Ultimately, truth is the focus. It’s the truth in the music that I need to love, not the music itself (which, while wonderful, is hollow if it is devoid of truth). My relationships are beautiful because (and only if) they echo truth. The things I learn are only valuable if they echo truth.

In the words of Jon Foreman, “Maybe truth is not something that I can possess. Maybe truth is something which possesses me."

And everything else? The opinions, the statistics, the standards, the countless ghosts of mistakes I’ve made? Kevin Young sings these words about all that... “go ahead, you’re never going to take me. You can bend, but you’re never going to break me. I was yours, I’m not yours anymore-- you don’t own me.”

Yes... I am owned by the truth of redemption. And in light of that, I can let go of everything else. May that truth be real in my life. May others see it shine.

- Elraen -