(About a 7 min read… I cried… so be prepared…)
My days began to blur together… I was confined, exhausted, and alone… alone is a relative term… It’s more about how I felt than where I was… I felt that no one understood my pain… and that no one understood the problems and challenges that I was faced with on a daily… no… hourly basis…
For nearly 5 months I lived in an upstairs bedroom suite of a family that graciously gave up their space to agree with me that my wife would be healed or at least to provide a safe place for her to pass quietly and peacefully. I hated the confinement… I hated being controlled… and I hated the sickness that was killing her. That’s where I was… that’s just the raw and the real of it….
As it is, I imagine, with anyone walking somebody through sickness, it requires a lot of heart, stamina and tenacity… Any downtime that I had I would invest in my children and music.
Playing guitar and singing had always been my therapy… my release… my escape… I never considered myself to be a good songwriter or writer of anything, actually… It’s just something that I enjoyed doing... I didn’t see myself as anyone of consequence… like those who could communicate beautifully through eloquent words or powerful music… with almost an innate ability to communicate exactly the story that one would want to convey. I just wrote what was on my heart… I wrote what I had been learning about God, about the power of the Holy Spirit, about how they made me feel and what that looked like in reality… song writing made it tangible and memorable for me…
We attended a small home church in Woodland Park, Colorado… The people were kind, intentional, and full of this new truth that I had discovered. I started writing songs… I wish I could take the credit… but they would just come out of me… I would show the lyrics to the pastor and say “ does this sound like God?”… “ is this what the Bible says”… and he would always respond in agreement... this was the man who walked me into the kingdom of God and I revered his perspective… never condemning and always leading me to Jesus… I believe he saw the miracle at work in me even then as God was speaking to me through my own gifts and ministering to me through my own music…
Much of what I wrote didn’t make sense to me… my songs would be written, mostly in under 30 minutes… I didn’t think they were that great, however, everybody else did… So I kept writing…
My wife was getting sicker. She was progressively closer to death. I wasn’t able to make many of the Home church gatherings. So I would make YouTube videos of songs that I wrote and send the link to the group to watch during church… It was all I had to give… it Encouraged people… it was all I knew to do…
The first song that I wrote, for the group was called “If You Listen”… it came out of a deep set challenge that we just need to listen to God and do what he says… It’s all I knew to do every day…” God”… I would say… “ what do I feed my wife… How do I take care of bedsores… How do I stand against depression… I can’t even decide what clothes to wear today. What should I wear?…” I was so stressed. I couldn’t even make my own decisions. But in those moments, I learned a valuable tool… or better yet… a valuable truth… that “if you listen to Him everything’s gonna be alright…”
This was my reality… everything in my life existed on this simplicity. Just Listen…
Sometime in October a woman that attended the small home church pulled me aside… she said “I love your music… The Lord told me I need to sow into you… he told me to pay your college tuition for Bible school”… I was both blessed and annoyed… I hated Bible school… But more than that I would’ve rather used that money to buy a car or something useful for my life… but the Lord told me that if I obeyed and followed wherever he lead me, that I would be blessed beyond measure… I didn’t know what that looked like, however, I gave God my yes that day… and he has kept his word…
As of the day of this writing, I’ve written 317 songs… full and complete songs that communicate the heart of God… many of them birthed out of my loss and hurt, but always pointing to the love of God.
I married the love of my life… she was/ and is the redemption to everything that was taken from me… God has set me on a solid rock, given me a platform, a healthy family, leadership, accountability, and progressive success… because I listened and gave God my yes… even when everything inside me said no.
Thank you for reading this long post… I know it can be a commitment at times to follow through with these to the end… You all are a blessing, and I hope my words encourage you to dig deeper into your own relationship with Christ and the Holy Spirit…
Thank you for listening…
Michael
🤍
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