Facing the Music (10 page)

I tried to recall any verse of Scripture that could help me understand how God could find this exercise redemptive, but I just couldn't see it. Honestly, how could this be holy? I remembered back to the day when I first responded to the Gospel. It was nothing like this. It was a moment of rest, of peace. In those moments I felt relief that I had truly been lifted out of a pit of despair. It wasn't like this at all.

Thankfully, the camp eventually yielded to exhaustion. By the wee hours of the morning, all the youth had been rounded up and ushered into the chapel, where Skip took his proud and accomplished self to the front of the room.

Softly now, in his most tender and pastoral voice, he began to speak.

“What happened here tonight, kids, was a drop in the bucket compared to Judgment Day.” His tone of comfort did little to quiet the sniffles and faint sobbing still coming from the crowd. “If you think you know fear,” he gently warned, “think again. There's always hell.”

At this point, I really had come to doubt whether I could find any portion of Skip's faith to empathize with. That kind of polluted message of grace was so far removed from the Gospel I had responded to. Through Christ, I heard the voice of compassion, not coercion. Skip seemed to disagree.

“For those of you who finally realized tonight that Christ is the only way? Welcome  . . . to your new beginning.”

While Skip's end-times exercise was an extreme example of evangelical altar calls, his wasn't an anomaly in terms of ideological practice. As I was discovering, my calling as a musician inside the church, especially within the evangelical community, came with the expectation that I was there not just to sing about my experiences with my faith, but to win souls for Jesus. I struggled, however, to find my footing in terms of such an evangelical mission. I didn't like the idea of putting people on the spot to make such an intimate, personal decision about their faith publicly. I thought there should be room for those of us who respond best to hours of quiet contemplation.

Throughout that long, hot summer, I had been asked countless times to participate in leading people to Jesus. Most churches called me a music minister, but I had no inclination to be anything other than a musician. I was happy to sing my songs and even say a little about my personal experience as a Christian but, when it came time for the invitation, I found myself making all manner of excuses to get out of the responsibility of telling people that they needed to accept Jesus then and there.

When I got back to my home church in Pittsburg, after weeks away, I would often be greeted by my pastor: “So, how's your ministry going? How many people did you lead to the Lord?”

The first time he said it, I thought he was joking.

“How many?” I asked quizzically in return, “I don't understand!”

“If God is working, you're bound to see the fruit of it in the souls of those you lead to Christ.” He smiled, but it felt like a rep
rimand. In that instant, I felt as though I had failed to be honorable to my calling.

Not only did I have no numbers to report, but I'd stumbled into a profound theological quandary as to how to speak responsibly about my faith. Something inside me didn't agree with the idea that a person could only find their faith the way my pastor and my evangelical peers prescribed, but I hesitated to admit it aloud.

On the surface, I understood the premise, but had difficulty with executing the mandate. My home church, at that point, was of a Baptist denomination that taught that there was only
one
way to know you were a true Christian:
confess
(preferably with witnesses) that Jesus Christ is your personal Lord and Savior, be
baptized
,
and
serve
Christ through all things in your daily life. I had come into Christianity this way and hoped to succeed by following the same standards
,
but it didn't stop me from being uncomfortable about insisting to others that they take the same path that I had taken. To me, it was
a
way, but I wondered, was it the
only
way?

Unlike many of my churched peers, I hadn't grown up believing all this. I wondered if my discomfort was more cultural than theological? Maybe they were just used to talking about God and Jesus all the time, while I was still getting used to such things.

It wasn't that church was completely alien to me. With few exceptions, my family made certain to attend Christmas and Easter services. It wasn't that my family rejected God, we just didn't use the same kind of language and style that my new evangelical friends did. Faith, however it came to us, was ultimately a private experience. Church was for Sundays and the Golden Rule (do
unto others as you would have them do unto you) was the ideal we were encouraged to keep. We prayed together as a family at Thanksgiving meals, but we explored our doubts and human suffering, quietly, on our own.

I had taken deliberate steps in following Jesus, and that made sense for me. Still, I was nothing like the supposed good people that I had seen in church when I was growing up. I saw myself as broken and in need of serious renewal. There were times when my Christian peers described my past life as debauched, and I felt judged when my friends celebrated my new life by calling me a redeemed harlot. I knew how it felt to be called a sinner so fallen that only God had the power and mercy to love me, while those who called themselves my friends could not look past my weaknesses.

In the end, what moved me to continue on was the waiting grace that I finally saw in God. I was inspired by what Jesus had said and done, forgiving all, loving all. I not only wanted to be the beneficiary of that kind of grace, I wanted every person I met to know they were loved. I wanted to stand in front of the Skips of the world and sing of a different story. I wanted to tell a story of hope rather than that of shame. I wanted to sing a song of joy rather than that of anger. I wanted to join together with others who were willing to wade through the religion and look for something real and life changing. To me,
that
was the spirit of what sharing one's faith meant. To pay forward, in action, the essence of the love we know that we have received.

ten

M
y faith, along with my music, was evolving.

In 1992, I was an eager, yet fragile, convert, dependent on others to inform my faith. By 1995, I was starting to develop my own sense of responsibility and ownership of my individual spiritual identity. Although I didn't see myself necessarily out to convince people they should follow into Christianity as I had, I was developing a vision as to how I could contribute to the conversation of spirituality. Despite the times that I found the church and religion bewildering, I had also found incredible stability and comfort. I was going on three years sober, my grades in college had dramatically improved, and my head was starting to clear enough that I started dreaming about my future again.

My friend Byron had spent the previous couple of years trying to encourage me to consider a professional career as a performer. In 1994, he had the grand idea to make some home-studio recordings of my early songs.

On nights after class and weekends, when I wasn't traveling, I headed over to Byron's little farm house in Scammon, Kansas. He set up a four track reel-to-reel tape machine and a couple of old microphones through an old eight-channel Mackie console. I had never before considered recording my original songs, but
we were off. I sang four original songs and one arrangement of the classic Sunday school tune “Jesus Love Me.” Byron sent the master recording off to a vanity press, where the whole thing was packaged into a nifty shrink-wrapped little cassette tape, titled
Circle Back.

Byron ordered hundreds of those cassettes, convinced that this was only the beginning of a career he thought was to be my certain destiny. Personally, I thought he was a little nuts. I couldn't imagine how in the world I was going to sell so many tapes in the short term, let alone see myself as having enough talent to make a career of it.

I was astounded however, when, only a few months later, Byron announced that we needed to order more copies. Now that I was performing on a regular basis, I was selling tons of them at shows. Byron had also been sending them to Christian coffeehouses, youth camps, and churches, so that he could give folks a sample of what I sounded like. Along with references from my church and other faith leaders I had worked for, he sent out packets and made cold-calls to every place he could think of, looking for places that would hire me to play.

Byron's efforts were paying off. I had practically spent the entire summer of 1995 traveling and the fall was starting to fill up as well.

The good news was that I was getting so much work that I had to start taking my minicareer seriously. Thankfully, I was earning enough with concert fees and selling my cassettes that a bit of the financial sting had been taken out of being a college student. The bad news was that I had so many gigs booked for the coming school year; it was going to be tricky to figure out how I could travel for work and continue to go to college.

Up until then, financing school had been a tight-rope act. When I had entered school in late 1992, I had done it on the back of music scholarships. The scholarships covered most of my direct school costs, but did little in terms of providing for my food and housing. There were times when all I could afford for groceries was a twenty-five-cent packet of knockoff mac'n'cheese. The rest of my funds went to sharing the rent with my roomies whom, I hoped, didn't notice or mind when I “borrowed” their butter and milk.

I worked as many part-time hours as I could, but keeping up with my school load made it difficult to make ends meet. For the last several years, I struggled to balance the demanding classroom and performance requirements of my music education major. Besides coursework, I was busy attending my own private lessons on trumpet, performing for multiple ensembles that included the symphony, marching band, and orchestra, not to mention the vocal choir that rounded out my obligations for keeping my scholarships. Between the demanding practice hours, performances, classes, then the part-time minimum wage job I had schlepping burgers at Hardee's, I was exhausted most of the time.

As I looked at the prospects for the coming 1995–96 school year, I admitted something had to give. Excitingly, it was already looking like Byron had many of my weekends booked with gigs, but I was going to have to choose whether to forego the scholarships by missing out on my required marching band performances or work singing my songs. I couldn't do both.

The truth was that I hadn't been the same trumpeter since entering college. From the moment I had haphazardly entered the Pitt State music program, I had always been two steps be
hind. I had spent the first year drunk, the second year sobering up, and the third year focusing on giving my life to Jesus. By year four, I was at a crossroad.

If I was to stay in school as a music education major, I was going to have to stress through another year of financial crisis and curtail my singing gigs. If I accepted the opportunities that were becoming available to me as a Christian artist, affording school would be easier, but I'd have to give up my music major and switch to something more compatible with my schedule.

I chose to take on Byron's challenge and get serious about my Christian music prospects. I changed my major to psychology, traveled on weekends to various gigs, and kept writing more music. Mondays through Fridays, I was a psychology undergrad and fast-food chef. Fridays through Sundays, I was a traveling troubadour.

Life, for me, was starting to become more vivid.

Gigging through the weekends, I enjoyed watching how music seemed to give people permission to express their own experiences. After shows, I talked for hours with my peers who were starting to become regular, supportive fans. We'd discuss our doubts, our faith, and our convictions, and compare how our individual experience might compare to the experiences of others. It felt good to have a growing audience, but more so, I enjoyed connecting with others about spirituality on an intellectual level.

If I were to be a Christian artist, I needed know more about its music as well. Before Captured and Byron's influence, I never knew it existed. Everybody called it contemporary Christian music (CCM). To my ears, most of it sounded like wanna-be
knockoffs of mainstream music. Most styles sounded similar to rock-and-roll or pop, but with syrupy, trite lyrics, which, to my ear, often sounded like religious propaganda.

I cringed when I realized that my early songs didn't sound too different from that:

Shine on me!

Once a slave to sin but now Your blood has set me free!

If there's anything that I can do Lord, anything that I can say-

Anything that I can do to make you my way-

Then let it be . . . !

—“Shine,”
Circle Back

It wasn't that I was necessarily offended by the idea of faith-based music. I just wanted to reach for the kind of musical and poetic depth that I had come to admire as a listener. For all my years as a trumpeter, playing High Church music, I had no problem leaning into music that pointed toward the heavens. It was just that, when it came to music, I wanted to get lost in lyrics that were rich and deep with meaning. Even when it came to my choice in popular artists, I had never been a pop-radio junkie. I loved songwriters like Natalie Merchant and Joni Mitchell, whose poetry had a way of mysteriously connecting my earthbound soul with their divine muse.

I continued to be fascinated that I, of all people, had had an experience with faith so radical that it had altered my outlook on life. My life had literally been saved, but it sounds so cliché to me (even still) to say that Jesus saved me, when there is so much more to the story. My choice to be a Christian was im
portant, so I didn't want to be trivial in my writing. I wanted to try to tell the truth of my new spiritual life and set it free to show up in the lyrics.

All the pennies I've wasted in my wishing well

I have thrown like stones to the sea.

I've cast my lots, dropped my guard, searched aimlessly

For a faith to be faithful to me.

—“Faithful to Me,”
Kansas/Wishing Well

It was all well and good to say that Jesus had saved me, but so too had a good therapist and some serious cognitive therapy. With my new pursuit as a psychology major, I wanted to explore more about how the human psyche develops and functions.

I was fascinated by how, even in secular, academic conversations, there always seemed to be a roving dialogue among the students about what is or isn't supposedly normal. To me, it was similar to the attitude that I encountered in the church, when we discussed whether who/what was or wasn't good.

On any given Sunday, I'd find myself immersed in a church culture obsessed with how imperfect or lacking we are as human spirits. The conversations always seemed to center around how broken humanity is, how distant from the perfection of Christ we all are, and how laborious and frightening it can be to continue to aspire to the seemingly unattainable sinlessness required of the Christian disciple. At times it left me wondering why I even bothered imagining that I could renew my life if all I could ever be was one misstep away from spiritual disaster.

On Monday morning, perhaps in a psychology of adjustment class, I would find myself confronted with how inescapable
most human behavior actually is. None of us are immune from precariously trying to balance our primal and cognitive needs. We have sex drives and hunger, greed and compassion. Strangely, along the way we usually manage to mix our own experiences with shame and insecurity that threaten to overpower our sense of emotional well-being. If we're lucky, we will discover what it is within us that helps us press on.

Creatively, as a writer, and a person of faith, I became fascinated with human frailty. How do we cause it, respond to it, or endure it? I saw benefits in both psychology and faith. Between the rational and spiritual, I felt like I was finding my peaceable footing with my own peculiarities. In my own life, I was eager to move beyond the Christian idea of flawed humanity and get on with living life to the full. If we are what we are—that is, inescapably human—then part of my responsibility is to learn how to honor myself and others along the way. From a Christian perspective, if Christ's sacrifice was to represent how my sinful nature (read:
human nature
) is reconciled with God's perfect holiness, then why should I be afraid to acknowledge my true self?

I was free to be loved for who I was and wanted to live that way. I didn't want to live under a cloud of shame for being, as it turns out, only
human.
The best of what Christianity would ever teach me was that even on my darkest days, no matter what condition I was in, I was a person made to be loved. As a child, there were times when I never dreamed this could have possibly been true, but all that was changing for me.

There's a place in the darkness that I used to cling to

That presses harsh hope against time.

In the absence of martyrs there's a presence of thieves

Who only want to rob you blind.

They steal away any sense of peace.

Tho' I'm a king I'm a king on my knees.

And I know they are wrong when they say I am strong

As the darkness covers me.

So turn on the light and reveal all the glory.

I am not afraid.

To bear all my weakness, knowing in meekness,

I have a kingdom to gain.

Where there is peace and love in the light

In the light, I am not afraid

To let your light shine bright in my life, in my life

—“Martyrs & Thieves,”
Kansas

THE LYRICS STARTED
taking the tone of self-examination and discovery, but I had yet to find a place where I could do so with abandon. Most of the work I found in the summertime was at youth camps or Sunday evening services, where I was expected to be bright and cheery, wholesome entertainment for the kids. When I launched into a pulsing, dramatic tune, singing “You in the mirror, staring back at me . . . Oh, conscience let me be,” the children seemed bored and the pastors looked concerned.

For one thing, I didn't really look like the so-called good Christian girl most people were expecting. I usually dressed in
jeans, some kind of T-shirt, and a pair of boots. It was a far cry from what most of the churchgoers expected to see.

Girls were supposed to wear dresses to church, play piano, and sing politely.

Me? I was pounding out rock songs on a guitar, sweating, breaking strings, and generally more than eager to talk about how hard it was to measure up to the high standards of Christian living. Usually, the soundtrack for elementary Sunday school was more genteel. Most folks were happy to support my love of music because I was singing about my faith, but weren't always in agreement that the church sanctuary was the best place for it.

Fortunately for musicians like me, Christian culture had embraced the idea of the live music coffeehouse. By the late 1990s, Kansas City was teeming with them. Whether it was a makeshift venue set up in the basement of a church or a strip-mall bookstore converted into a barista parlor for the night, there were finally places a good Christian kid could go to hear some music that expressed their own spiritual experience, rather than simply parroting the faith that they had inherited from their parents. It was a great environment for college students seeking an alternative to the alcohol-fueled club scene to have some good clean fun, but it also proved to be a safe place for many of us to explore and live out our own ideas about faith without the worry of upsetting the applecart of orthodoxy.