for days when you need a little hope... {guest post for Velvet Ashes}

Photo credit: William Broughton, age 6

Have you walked through a season - maybe right now - where you feel like your creativity is bottled up inside of you, waiting for a chance to come out?  Since I’m in the throes of early motherhood, that’s me, most of the time!  But every once in a while, despite my crazy, interruption-filled days and miles-long to-do list, something creative leaks out and finds room to breathe.  And that feels hopeful to me.

I write songs for all sorts of reasons: to tuck Scripture inside my heart.  To express myself to Jesus.  To capture a quote I love.  To revitalize an old hymn text.  

Mostly, I write music because it gives me hope.  

There’s definitely something creative in spreading peanut butter on apple slices for my kids (in between writing these sentences).  But then there’s the specific “art you were made to live”, which Emily Freeman describes in her hope-filled book A Million Little Ways.  Something deep inside me starts to wither if I don’t intentionally exercise my creativity beyond cooking meals, playing with my kids, and trying to keep my house relatively dirt-free and attractive.  

When I feel a song rising in me, it gives me hope that my creativity is still alive despite the fog of fatigue and swirl of mundane tasks.  So I pay attention, and try to write in the little cracks of time I can find.  It isn’t perfect, or as much as I’d like, but it keeps hope alive.  

For me, music is a bridge between the seasons of my life. 

Rewind ten years to my first stint overseas, fresh out of college....

I'm over at Velvet Ashes today, sharing my story of creativity and hope... come read more and be encouraged! 

for all you fellow sparrows...

One of my favorite bloggers (you can probably guess who) posted about sparrows yesterday... and I thought of you.

You, and me, we're just two little sparrows, making nests, fluttering our wings, trying to find worms for breakfast.  We're both living in tents, dying a little every day, chirping back messages over our shoulders to others coming behind us - "Here's where the best crumbs are found!"

Come count crumbs today with me, and Ann, and a whole host of others...

...for daily worms... I mean, bread!

...for messages chirped back from those who've flown ahead.

...for Light to show us the way.

...for nests in which to lay our heads.

...for feathers to keep us warm.

...for the One who holds each of us in the palm of His hand.

A gift from one sparrow to another... give this music as a special Mother's Day gift?  Click on the album cover on the sidebar to preview snatches on iTunes...

{If you prefer a physical CD, just click the "Buy Now" Paypal button on the sidebar, and my own loving mother will slip one in the mail to you...}

{Email readers, feel free to forward this post to a heart you think would love some gentle new music this Mother's Day - maybe your own mother, or someone else's, or a young mother who needs encouragement as she tends her own flock of little sparrows?}

songs for heavy hearts

{With hearts still heavy for Boston, I humbly offer these songs as, maybe, a balm for sore spirits?}

She’s listening, and she says she feels better.

Both our hearts are heavy today for a mutual friend.  Already this morning I’ve prayed aloud with tears, the words stumbling slow, while she drinks belated coffee and tries to summon enough appetite for a banana.  She says she's just not hungry.  What if it were her babies in the hospital?  

What if it were mine?

Even after praying, the burden remains for both of us.  I cut up vegetables for chicken stock while I lift up every thought as a prayer.  

I’ve told her she can borrow my iPod whenever she wants, that she can listen to whatever she wants.  Today it happened to be set on these heart-songs when she arrived, and when I offer to change it, she says she likes it that way.  Says my voice is comforting, even though she doesn’t understand the words.  

She asks for my earbuds, plugs one in, leaves one dangling.  Connected to both worlds at once.  She wears the earbuds and my blue cap with the silver spangles out to turn over the garden.  I see heaven covering her head.  

I make chicken stock, and watch her spading earth through the window.  The stock simmers, and I join her, pick up a spade, shove it in heavy ground and lift.  The sun warms our backs.  I ask her: how does she feel now?

She says she's feeling better, listening.  Smiles, glances at me over the top of her spade handle.  

This music, almost all in a language she doesn’t understand… somehow, she feels my heart beating through these songs.  Somehow, God’s peace is filling her ears, her heart.    

This dear friend, she is sound as a good apple - sweet right through to the core.

It’s her ordinariness that rescues me from thinking too highly of myself.  She’s like a solid oak tree whose very presence is reassuring.

It’s her humble, laughing acceptance of the hardships in her life that humbles me, prods me into contentment.

I don’t know what I’d do without her friendship.  She is the rock for me in this strange land.  Even though I have had to learn her heart language to communicate with her heart,  sometimes I think even if we couldn’t speak a word to each other, we’d still be friends.

And yet, she doesn’t know.  She doesn’t know what I know.

She doesn’t know where to find that welling up of joy, that spring of peace that flows in any circumstance.  She doesn’t know where to find wisdom that actually works, love that is tender and intimate, romance that surprises.  

She doesn’t know how much she is Loved.  

I am here to tell her.  

Thank You for this music.  Speak through it, through my stumbling tongue.  Fill me with timeliness, and courage.  Help me wait patiently until the moments are ripe, then help me speak boldly when You nudge.  

With all else wonderful that she is, she is not yet my heart sister.  

This I long for.  Every. day.  

Sparrow - finally here!

It's finally finished... 

...just in time for Christmas! 

I am so excited to share these songs with all of you!  They come from my heart, and I hope they minister to yours.  

From the booklet of Sparrow: 

These songs have blossomed out of thoughts and realizations from years of living a cross-cultural, transient life.  

I’ve recorded a few songs in the past, but this is my first original album on this scale, and even just agreeing with God to start the process was a huge step of faith.  I recorded the whole thing when I was nine months pregnant with our daughter, Ruby Grace.  

The title track especially captures my relief at being able to tuck my most precious treasures - my children - under God’s wings and trust Him to be our home.  

My prayer as you listen is that God Himself will draw near and speak to your heart, and that His presence and peace will become tangibly yours.   

Some photos from the making of...

May you know His presence and peace this Christmas, kind friends!