My New Record THESE COLD AND RUSTED LUNGS is HERE!!! And you can ORDER YOUR COPY HERE!
Here's what I can tell you about myself:
FIRST AND FOREMOST: I love passionately. God. Music. People. All I am is wrapped up in this: to love with my whole being by spreading audacious honesty and hope through song; and effect positive change in Africa and around the world by inspiring listeners into action. Because without action, faith is dead.
Born and raised in Denver, I am the youngest of four daughters born to a singing preacher and his pianist-singer wife. Music is in my DNA, along with Christian spirituality and a healthy daily dose of all things theological. I "became a Christian" just a few months after I learned to walk, and was fairly certain that life would be a bag of tootsie pops thereafter, especially since the day I got saved my mom let me jump on the bed. So when a silly boy broke my heart during my junior year of high school, I was all but ruined at the tender age of 16. God became elusive and un-knowable, His presence with me questionable at best, and faith became something I’d have to, for the first time, hash out and make my own.
So, against the soundtrack of the brutal but beautiful honesty of artists like Jennifer Knapp and Sixpence None the Richer, I set out to find a connector between what I knew in my head and what I was experiencing in real-life that seemed to contradict intellect at every turn. I researched and wrote the high school equivalent of a dissertation on the resurrection of Christ, and in so doing discovered the importance of having a personal faith based in reason. And I honed in on my love for writing poetry, decrying the pain of relationships, religion, and human depravity and finiteness, learning the importance of allowing the spirit the freedom to abandon reason and express what only a creative God could understand.
Through it all, a passion for examining and expressing a livable faith through a lyrical and theological lens was unearthed. Inspired by the transparency and honesty of my favorite artists to fearlessly broach the darker sides of faith and ask the dirtier questions most of our peers and leaders considered taboo, I bought a cheap guitar and starting fitting melodies for the poetic questions. This blending together of foundational truth with honest, if dark, poetry in song as an effort to connect my heart and head became a kind of personal therapy, and carried me through my senior year of high school in a new state, a hard-earned bachelor’s degree in theology, and a failed marriage engagement, to the pursuit of music in Nashville, TN.
.Where, while sharing songs at a writer's night, I met the man who would turn all my carefully reconstructed belief systems on their backs, forcing me to re-examine everything from the ground up once again.
Inevitably, what I learned through the process of re-examination served as material for the 17 songs which would eventually compose my first two records, and the man who challenged me into authentic spirituality and true artistry would eventually serve as the male half of my marriage.
Years later, I’m still here navigating, dissecting and responding to an ever-growing passion for connecting basic theology with real-life experience in a relatable way and finding sense in the mess. All these years later I’m still striving to address and flesh out issues of spirituality, theology, love, friendship, purpose, and global poverty and politics with authenticity and gritty honesty through song.
Ultimately, neither my life nor story is terribly noteworthy. But they boil down to a passion for two things of irrefutable importance in an increasingly self-serving world: fearlessly embarking on adventures that challenge me and others to test and own a personal faith, and to activate our theology in the lives of the neighbors we’re commanded to love; and to write honest, provocative music from the discoveries made along the way. I'm honored to have a voice people listen to. But if what I say does nothing to provoke service and love for those in need, it's been used in vain. God forbid.
