I'm Sorry

An Overdue Apology For A Song I Wish I Hadn't Written

I’m sorry.

I’ll start there. We’ll come back to it more than once, I’m sure.

I am definitely a critic of art — particularly songs, and most especially songs meant for the Church. I kept pulling on that thread so long that I found myself standing in recording studios and record companies where I could be the person who stood between the songwriter or artist and the song getting out into the world, and I could ask questions.

“What do you mean here?”
“Is this really what you want to say?”
“What led you to this belief?”
“Do you think you could say this better?”
“Want to try it again?”

Over time, this developed into three simple questions that I ask of every work I’m a part of:

Is it true?

Is it useful?

Is it kind?

I’d love to unpack these more later, but for now I’ll say that I don’t have any hard and fast rules for what to do with the answers. I find that just asking the questions more often than not reveals what the next steps ought to be.

I didn’t always have these questions, though.

Sometimes I had people who asked me their versions of questions like these. Sometimes I didn’t.

Sixteen years ago, I didn’t.

At that point, I had spent five years in the band Caedmon’s Call, and we were making what would turn out to be their last record (before the occasional reunion projects would start a decade or so later). Most of the people in the band had begun to put energy into other pursuits, knowing another season was on the horizon. Though they cared deeply about the band and the project, they didn’t have the energy for it they’d had back in the beginning.

I, meanwhile, had the energy of a panicked rabbit. I had two kids, a wife, a mortgage, no college degree, and no real idea of how I would support my family once this thing ended—not that I was doing a great job supporting them while it was going.

The band let me take the lead on production for the album, which was an honor, and I literally worked myself sick. I pulled more than one all-nighter to turn things in to the label (which then probably sat un-listened-to for a week or two in somebody’s inbox, I now realize). I was desperate to get a hit song to ease the financial stress, so I wrote song after song after song after song, hoping the band and the label would hear something in one of them and put a bunch of energy behind it.

I’d always written songs around my life, my faith, or stories that felt interesting, or songs that could be a gift to someone I loved. I’d never really REALLY tried to write a Christian “hit” before. Trying to grab catchy phrases. To be “positive and encouraging”.

I finally landed on something that felt like it had promise. It was called There Is A Reason.

You know how when something really bad happens and you’re deep in your suffering, and someone comes up to you and, instead of sitting with you in your grief, waves it away and says, “Cheer up, buckeroo, God has a plan. There is a reason for everything.” Get over the death of your spouse or your child or the loss of your job or your home or your marriage or the evils of war or corruption or disease… There’s a reason, so… stop bumming everybody else out with your sadness, I guess?

Yeah, that was the gist of the song.

I’m sorry.

Anyway, I had the idea for the song. Some of the pieces. I needed help finishing it. I asked my friend Randall. He didn’t love it, but I kept pushing.

We wrote a lot of songs on that record together, and many of them I’m still really proud of. Hold the Light is my favorite song I ever got to do with Caedmon’s, and he and I wrote it for this album.

But There Is a Reason? Randall added a lot of beauty and grace to what I can now see in retrospect was my desperate attempt to just get something on the radio. He couldn’t talk me out of it, so he helped make it better than it otherwise would have been.

So I guess sixteen years ago I did have a person I trusted asking me some of those questions. I just didn’t listen.

I did a lot of that back then.

I’m sorry.

I hope I listen a little better now.

So the song came out, and it did get on the radio a little bit. I sang it every night on that tour (though I didn’t sing the lead on the record). Lots of people heard this tune. Many suffering people came to our shows and turned on the car radio and bought our CD. They heard this song that told them, essentially, to get over it. Don’t get bummed out by the man of sorrows, well acquainted with grief. God’s in control. Turn that frown upside down!

I’m sorry.

—-

So now, let me ask those questions of this song.

Was it true?

Maybe? But maybe not? Depending on the stack of books I’m trying to get through and the Scripture translation I used this morning, and the conversation I had last night… I don’t know what I think anymore.

Hundreds of years of actual theologians have made great arguments for and against, so who knows, besides God. He must have a reason for not telling us, I guess.

I do very much believe that He will make all things good. THAT is true.

Was it useful?

To somebody suffering? I highly doubt it.

To somebody studying theology? Definitely not.

Did we have a hit? I’ll answer that question with a question:

Did Kirk Cameron play me in an action-adventure film adaptation based on my uber-successful song? Sadly, he did not.

Was it kind?

No.

I’m sorry.

—-

I released some new music a week or so ago that I think has better answers to those questions. If you have a few minutes, here’s a song from my OLD old band (called The Normals, that I was in before Caedmon’s Call). I’ve always loved this song and got to re-record it for my new acoustic retrospective album “Hold The Light”.

It’s a song about being homesick for a place where you belong, whether that’s with friends, family, a romantic relationship, or eternal communion with my Creator. Hope you enjoy.