Here's What I Really Want to Tell You:

I am ok. The thing about failing at something- in this case- a CD that has (so far) gotten very little radio play and even fewer purchases- is this:

Everyone fails.

Failure is inevitable.

And also- I don't care what the numbers say or the charts read. Sure, there are nights when I cry and curse and pout and decide I will quit. But those voices- those numbers and charts don't define the value of what I have created. I wrote ten songs. Me! A girl who had no idea she could write ten songs, let alone write songs that tell the story of my journey and the human experience as we wait out the unknown deserts of life. It may not rank high on the charts or be a best-seller; but it is honest and true to the places God has led me. He. The Good Shepherd.

And telling the story of how the Shepherd has led me was never meant to be monetized in the first place- was it?

So many uncomfortable thoughts and questions.

And the truth is, our culture is simply not good at uncomfortable waiting and uncomfortable questions.

***

A few months ago I came downstairs and found Ryan watching another one of his never-ending endless Netflix documentaries. The amount of documentaries these days seems ridiculous. Documentaries on bikes and motorcycles and wheelchairs and farms and guns and medicine and food and internet dating and vagabonds. It's endless. This time, he was watching a documentary with little talking, mostly in sub-titles, and all about Sushi. Seriously? A documentary on Sushi making?

I totally judged him and the entire film-making community in one fatal swoop.

And then- I heard the man on the film say something that stopped me in my tracks. Literally, I was in the kitchen working and came into the living room and said, "re-wind that."

The movie, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, draws me in. Not because of the amazing culinary genius or the exquisite food created by the 3 star Michelin rated chef- but because it paints the story of a man who has devoted everything to perfecting the art of his craft. His son, who has apprenticed under his father, tells about the years of practice and learning that happens before a single egg is allowed to be cracked in Jiro's kitchen. The years he spent watching and training under his dad before he was allowed to create his own batch of rice. Years before he was allowed to make rice?  That's the part I made Ryan re-wind.

I've been making rice- mostly crunchy- since the 5th grade.

Did he really say it was ten years before he was allowed to make rice?

The ridiculous amount of time Jiro has lavished on this one thing stopped me dead in my tracks and I wept through most of Jiro Dreams of Sushi.

“JIRO DREAMS OF SUSHI is about a spiritual journey towards perfection. But it is not about achieving perfection. It is about the act of striving for it. The film is breathtaking, inspirational and most of all humbling. ”- Eric Ripert, Chef/Co-Owner Le Bernardin.

This is an entire film dedicated to patience. An entire film about someone who went TEN YEARS before he was allowed to cook his first batch of rice.

Do you know anyone- honestly- who has apprenticed at anything for ten years before attempting it? Much less making a bowl of rice?

This movie is shocking because watching it, you become aware of your aversion to patience. Your aversion to waiting.

Waiting is uncomfortable.

It is uncomfortable for the person who is having to wait and it is uncomfortable for the on-looker.

It's like watching the Olympic athletes preparing to flip off of the high-dive. It is excruciating. Your heart beats faster than there's. You hold your breath. Unable to move.  Slightly frozen by the fear of the height and the audacity of the jump. The anxiety for the onlooker is paralyzing. JUMP ALREADY. JUST GET IT OVER WITH. JUUUMMMPPP.

Make yourself a freaking bowl of rice!!! DO IT.

The athlete's ability to wait in the middle of the tension and only jump when they are good and ready is heart-attack inducing for those of us just wanting to hurry up and get them off the high-dive before they slip and fall and lose control and get hurt.

Our aversion to patience- our propensity to hurry along the person who is waiting, preparing- speaks deeply to the state of our souls. We just want it to be fixed for them. We want to end their suffering and wrap up those tense moments of untold waiting with a pretty bow.

We are a people averse to waiting. We like short-cuts and quick answers. Happy endings that don't have to be fought for. That don't require mountains to climb and valleys to languish in before getting to the finish line. Watching someone else wait- is like watching a slug die. Brutal. Tie that in with little glimmers of failure as the person waits out the desert?

We cannot bear to watch someone walk through it.

***

So to boldly tell the world you are stuck. Waiting. A semi-failure at your current gig. Unsure of what comes next. Wrestling with what comes next and why the dreams aren't panning out is hard. Because hand in hand with that message is this:

I am ok with the waiting.

I am thriving in the desert.

While those who love me want me to jump already (for my own safety, of course)

I am ok standing tippy-toed on the edge of the diving board.

Do I want to jump?

Absolutely. I cannot wait to jump.

But until then- my eyes are focused. Locked in. My feet gripped firmly. Freely. My spirit is being prepared. My soul renewed. I am becoming brave. I am becoming centered. I am becoming purposeful. I am becoming prepared.

I am becoming.

And there is no other place that I want to be.

I am ok with this season of waiting.

And you can be too.

Simplifying War

No parent wants meaningful public discourse and policy to come at the cost of their own child. At the end of the day I would love to see tighter gun control measures, less boots on the ground in Afghanistan, a cure for cancer and a better understanding of mental illness and the possible treatment approaches for depression; but not at the expense of Annie's life. My heart breaks for parents who champion change in their child's absence. Theirs is a job of constant heartbreak and courage.

To the parents who so fearlessly continue to give voice to the evil which robbed them of the very babies they created inside their bodies: I am forever grateful to you and forever in awe of your bravery.

You are an army waging war against enemies many of us have never had to look in the eyes. You do not quit. Your tears have run dry and your resolve has intensified. You look deep into the eyes of the enemy and you don't break your gaze.

You put on your fatigues, pick yourselves up by the bootstraps and head back into the trenches with demons no momma or daddy should ever have to fight.  And you fight.  You fight like hell.

You know better than anyone that you can't simplify war.

The enemy is there-

but the enemy is omnipresent and illusive.

You must fight on all fronts-

with weapons you didn't even know existed with offensive measures you've never even considered with strategies you never wanted to author

You are a guerrilla warrior.

Under your surge, you will engage people's minds, break their hearts and persuade them to act- not for you-

but on behalf of that picture on the fireplace of the little boy who used to ask you to play tickle monster... long before he faced real monsters.

You have seen those monsters. Better than any of us, you have seen them.

And you know- deep down in the fabric of who you are- that there is no easy way to get rid of them.

We simplify it, don't we?

As if a policy change-doctor- pill- counselor- a little more prayer- or just picking a better attitude!- would chase the monster away and win the war once and for all.

As onlookers we forget that some wars never end. Some wars are hard-fought and long-lasting. Some wars have names like "The 100 Year War." Some wars, as Pastor Rick Warren so painfully wrote about this weekend, never subside.

"In spite of America’s best doctors, meds, counselors, and prayers for healing, the torture of mental illness never subsided. Today, after a fun evening together with Kay and me, in a momentary wave of despair at his home, Matthew took his life.”

Some enemies are deeply rooted in the marrow.

Defeat is not that simple.

General Stanley McChrystal, the four star American general who led all U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan, was recently interviewed by Foreign Affairs and asked about his role in leadership as compared to his predeccesor, General Casey. In essence- was one leader more essential to the surge in Iraq than the other? The humility and wisdom in General McChrystal's answer has stuck with me.

He said, "People tend to simplify things. They try to say, 'It was all screwed up here and then it got all good there,' or, 'This decision was decisive.' I have never found anything that clear."

Me either, General McChrystal.

He ended the interview by reiterating again that there is no one single way- no single leader- no single strategy that can precisely and ultimately dismantle an adversary.

"If you go back in history, I can't find a covert fix that solved a problem long term. There were some necessary covert actions, but there's no "easy button" for some of these problems."

Those of you waging wars unending know.

You know better than anyone that there is not an 'easy button'.

You know better than anyone the overwhelming, misguided urge the rest of us have to simplify what is not simple.

You know, in the same way that a decorated war veteran knows, that a covert fix rarely solves a problem long term.

You know torture that does not subside.

Don't Fight Alone

From a girl who fights small battles of overwhelming fear and anxiety with 200 miligrams of Zoloft, a psychiatrist, a supportive husband, yoga and prayers for mercy and a clear, calm, mind... I know first hand that I can't fight alone. I know that what I have- this obsessive compulsive disorder that leads to a barrage of intense thoughts that makes me feel terrified for NO LOGICAL REASON- has no simple fix.

I don't choose it. I can't prevent it. I don't want it. I don't understand it.  It is not rooted in reality. And there is no covert fix that makes the thoughts go away. General McChrystal said it best. There is no "easy button" for some problems.

For me, it is a multifaceted attack on a war unending. I don't simplify it and neither should anyone else.

Simplifying the enemy is dangerous. As if all enemies are the same.

As if all wars can be fought in one way.

THEY CAN'T.

The only thing historically certain and constant about any military approach to a war is this: It takes an army.

Battles are not won, lost or fought alone. Ever.

Community

So what do you need from your community?

Those around you who have no idea what it's like to fight your war over and over and over again...

No one wants you fighting alone. And we don't want to simplify a war with trite, pithy quotients. With opinions. With black and white solutions that have no bearing on your enemy. With empty grace and borrowed empathy. With intolerance and blind hearts. With battle-cry's we don't intend to proclaim on your behalf for the long haul.

We can't afford to simplify battles any longer. We are tired of losing wars and are ready to wage wars... with you, for you, on your behalf.  No matter how long it takes.

How can we walk with you? How can your friends fight with you?

Tell them. They will listen.

We will listen.

Story Behind the Song: The In Between

A friend’s brother passed away this past year unexpectedly. The brother had lived quite a colorful life and often found himself the black sheep of the family. He was rebellious, adventurous and sometimes just plain lost. He migrated from his home, in the southern part of the United States, to the dry desert of Arizona. It was there, working with his hands to build and create; exploring the rugged terrain of a deserted land; meeting others who were drawn to the same complexly beautiful, star-splattered sky, that he began to find himself fully alive again.

The life of Todd Skaggs, a man I never knew, began to fascinate me.

Here was a person who found himself most fully alive in a desert. 

Finding one’s self most fully alive in a dry, seemingly dead place like a desert, seemed so ironic to me. How do you experience rebirth in a place where at best, organisms perpetually fight to survive, and at worst new life never has a chance to begin? As his own brother’s grieved his sudden passing they wrote about Todd’s life and how the desert had become so much a part of him.

“Todd was the prodigal son who never found his way back to his father in this lifetime but is firmly held in the arms of our dad in another. Todd loved life. That is a sure thing. He moved to Arizona to be closer to life- scaling close to death as he loved the adventure that the desert brought. Todd loved the desert. I cannot underscore this enough. He loved the desert. He loved getting on his motorcycle with extra fuel strapped to a backpack and riding deep into the painted wilderness until the stars outnumbered the grains of sand. He understood God's perfect design in the smallest of desert creatures. Todd knew them all by name.”

A prodigal son found a place to call home in the desert. 

And this got me thinking about my own journey. How many times have I been in the walls of a church or fully immersed into the domesticity, noise and rush of routine daily life and not heard from God? Too many to count.

But when I finally make it to a “painted wilderness”- a desolate place where perhaps I’ve ended up because I have wandered there with extra fuel strapped to my back, hoping to catch glimpses of unending beauty, hoping for answers, hoping to be found or be free, or perhaps because I have been dumped there, lost, alone and terrified- it is quite often in the desert that I “begin to understand God’s perfect design.”

The life of Todd Skaggs, a man I never knew, reminded me that sometimes it takes a desert- a quiet, dry, rugged, lonely desert to peer deep into the eyes of what is true and be drawn back to the heartbeat of what is constant and holy.  It makes complete sense that this is where a prodigal son would wander back to- a place where God’s holiness is laid bare.

During my own season of becoming I learned to call the desert my home because within this painted wilderness I met a God who seemed quite at ease with the sand-whipped rocks, cactus and empty space. There in the emptiness- every crevice of soil, sand, sun and sin were laid bare under a million stars declaring God’s glory. And with an empty pallet- the Lord began to paint my own wilderness with brilliant strokes of color I had never even seen. That which was lost began to be found. In the desert.

I wrote the song, The In Between, because of a man I never knew.

A man who taught me-

the desert isn’t a place we go to die, but a place we go to come back to life  

The In Between  by Paul Moak, Jenny Simmons

Light shines bright In the desert night And I feel alive again I've given up on trying to fight Wars I cannot win So here we are, with a million stars This is where new life begins And I'm ready to take your hand

Throw away my plans I finally feel free I can dream again See where your spirit leads And I will cross this desert ground Cause what was lost can now be found Here in between

Lights shine bright In the city sky And my heart feels full again I was swallowed up by buildings so high And walls that could not bend Now we're here tonight, with a million lights Throwing caution to the wind And I'm ready to take your hand

When you're wandering the great unknown A million miles away from home Just because you're lost doesn't mean you're alone

Throw away my plans And I finally feel free I can dream again See where your spirit leads I will cross this broken ground Cause I was lost, but now I'm found Here in between

Broken Hallelujah's

Bistrita River, Bistrita, Romania

freedom comes when we find the place where mercy starts

I could follow the winding lull and twisting rapids of a river for days. Wild and cocky, shy and modest, wise and agile, I am drawn to their banks and captivated by their steady mystery.

If you ask me about a place that I have visited, I will answer first by telling you of their rivers.

About the summers spent at my Mamaw and Papaw's house in Mississippi, I will tell you about playing on the banks of the Chickasawhay River; swollen, deep and murky.

About my trip through Slovakia, nestled beyond the roads leading out of the capitol city of Bratislava, I will tell you of the Danube. Dug impossibly deep into the earth, the rocky ledges that make the banks are dotted by cottages and smokestacks billowing out their warmth high into the mountains that tower over them like a fortress.

Of my trips to Budapest, Hungary- I will tell you of the majestic bridges and cobblestone walkways over the Danube, the mighty river that stretches 1,785 miles across ten countries and tells a story as far back as the Romans.

And of my time living in a graciously-slow, by-gone world nestled at the foot of the Bargau Mountains, not far from the legendary Transylvania Mountains, I would tell you first of the sweet orphans I got to love on. Then, I would tell you of the Bistrita River which cuts through the heart of the city and has provided for the people since the early 1200’s. From the Slavic word bystrica, which means ‘serene water,’ the town Bistrita was named. A living, breathing, moving work of divine craftsmanship. When I think of the Romanian people- strong, resilient, peaceful and artistic, I think of their rivers. When I think of the 20 year-old-girl who went to live among them, I think of the Bistrita River and how it forever calmed something deep in my soul.

Of Santa Fe I will give you The Pecos River. Yes, I will give you my river. Every year I take a pilgrimage to the Santa Fe National Forest. I sit on the same rock- at the same bend in the river- and I learn how to be human again. For hours I sit in complete silence in a wilderness so far removed from civilization that I feel utterly unknown to any one in the world.  And there on my rock, in my river, I am whole.

I believe God meets people time and time again in certain places. He certainly did in scripture.

On mountains. In our sleep. At the alter. On long runs. Within the church. And for me, at rivers.

God meets me at rivers and shows me something about myself and something about the Trinity that I do not seem to hear- or learn- or know any other way.

In the new song, Broken Hallelujah’s, I wanted to invite people into the most intimate, well-worn place where God shows up and meets me; a broken and quite flawed girl.

The most beautiful part of my spiritual journey has been realizing that God does not tolerate our state of brokenness with disengaged disdain, but embraces us, lovingly,  in the midst of it.

I’m not good at faking it and pretending to be something I’m not. I’m not willing to make a bunch of empty promises that I know good and well I cannot keep. What I have learned about the Christian God is, those things are not what is required of me anyways. Instead it is to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with my God. I’ve got the “walk humbly” part down. It is at the river- both physical and symbolic- that I come before the Lord and lay down my weaknesses, sin, shame, and shortcomings. And there are many.

And it is there that the Lord smiles over me. Rejoices over me. And takes sheer joy in who I am. And once again I am unashamed to be me. I am free. I am known. I am accepted. I am loved. I am cared for. I am, like a lost sheep, picked up by the Shepherd and brought to life-giving water and safety. And I find rest with the others who have also been carried back to the banks of the streams and rivers on the shoulders of a strong- gracious-relentless Shepherd intent on finding even one lost lamb.

Unmerited grace and mercy are most manifest when we find ourselves in the place where we finally understand  that we need grace and mercy.

In the forward to one of my favorite books, Embracing the Love of God by James B. Smith, author Richard Foster summarizes his friend’s work by saying, “Under the overarching love of God we receive God’s acceptance of us so we can accept ourselves and others; we welcome God’s forgiveness of us so we can forgive ourselves and others; we embrace God’s care for us so we can care for ourselves and others... Nothing can touch us more profoundly than the experience of God’s loving heart.”

It is because of this type of love from God that I do not merely sing songs of brokenness, but songs of broken praise.

I have found that an offering of broken hallelujahs is the sweetest kind.

So if you ask me about a place that I have visited, I will answer first by telling you of their rivers...

where the Lord has showed up time and time again.