First Breath After Coma

I'm not a musician. I adore music, and can sing/make some music, but I have no extraordinary musical talent. It doesn't come naturally to me; I have to work pretty hard to churn out something decent. So I usually just don't.

However, there is a particular band called Explosions in the Sky who really doesn't need to be excited about their music because I've got enough excitement for the entire band and a few audience members combined. (I have heard that they ARE a passionate band and therefore they are well-known for their live music... it's now on my bucket list to see them live.) Mind you, I don't really think of myself as a very passionate person, but many people have told me that they admire the passion they see inside of me, so I'll just take their word for it. I have, however, figured out clues as to when I'm passionate about something--I study it. I annotate it.

Also, I can't shut up about it. My friend Hannah and I have very deep heart conversations, and I mentioned Explosions in the Sky to her several times because they are so deeply embedded into my heart in the background of some of the subjects we talk about. Hannah became curious, so I recommended a few songs. She was converted after that. I burned a couple of CDs for her and handed them over.

I only have two albums out of six by this band because their music is so complex and beautiful to me that it takes me months to absorb and process each album. Every single song has a purpose and a meaning, and I LOVE figuring out how God fits each song into my life. Explosions in the Sky is how I hear God. It's my worship music. You already know I'm a writer and that I love words. I love song lyrics too. But see, Explosions in the Sky is a purely instrumental band. No singer, no leader of the group, just a bunch of guys all contributing equally. And I like that sort of harmony. And I like that there are no words. Your emotions, your dreams, your experiences... those are the lyrics.

Honestly, I have no idea if any of the guys in this band love God or not. And even more honestly, I don't really care. It would be fantastic if they all do, but if God wants to use people who don't even love Him to make His voice clearer to some people who yearn to hear it... hey, can't argue with that. Their music doesn't bring you down like a lot of music does now--it lifts your head. It makes you look up from the ground.

I would love to write about each song and what they mean to me all in one post, but that wouldn't be fair. It would mesh them all together and take the beauty away from the individuality of the songs. So I may scatter some songs throughout my posts. We'll see.

What is the point of this long intro, you ask? Some background, I guess. Some sharing of the passion I have for their music. I don't need to be a musician--I've got a Musician practically DJing for me. And that's pretty okay.

One of the albums is called The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place (which is always a good reminder). It's the the closest to love songs they've got and will ever get. There is such a celestial sound to this album... it sounds the way heaven should.

The first song is called First Breath After Coma. It's meant to signify waking up from a deep sleep, and the drums create a heartbeat throughout the song. I think of the heartbeat as God's... and then at the very end, the heartbeat seems to expand and beat faster and it merges with another heartbeat--ours after He wakes us up to His existence.

It's also worth noting that Tammy wrote a bunch of letters consisting of things the Lord asked her to write down for the youth. One of my letters stated that the Lord really wanted me to just lay my head on His chest and listen to His heart beat for me. My thoughts immediately went to this song... and so that's what I hear when I listen to this.

Don't be disappointed if you don't experience what I do with their music. Sometimes when someone talks about their passion, we get intrigued and expect to feel the same. It's okay if you don't... we all hear God differently, and this is how I hear Him.

It's long, but it's worth it.

Don't Quit

Carrie found a poem and posted it on Facebook last year. I thought it was absolutely beautiful and copied it down with a word document on the computer I was using at the time.

Unfortunately, that computer broke. I was somehow able to salvage my word documents via flash drive and plugged them onto my personal laptop. Even more unfortunately, I didn't have Microsoft Word on the laptop, and so was not able to read any of the documents I had saved since there were no compatible programs to open them up. It was pretty disappointing.

Until...

A few months ago, I succeeded in downloading Microsoft 2010 onto my laptop, due to the fact that I needed it for school and a powerpoint for a youth lesson that I was preparing at the time. So I've actually been able to open up the old documents and never even knew it until a few minutes ago when clicking around on my desktop.

What I found were memorable papers from senior year, a half-written youth lesson, wonderful quotes from a particular book called Chasing the Dragon by Jackie Pullinger, a book that I'd begun writing about my time in Nicaragua... it was a treasure trove!

And then I opened up the word document with the poem Carrie had shared, well over a year ago. And after reading it, I decided that I wanted to share it too. Because today, a group of people and I began a 20-week class called Living Waters. It's for those who are sexually and/or relationally broken. It originally began as a class for homosexuals, expanded for the sexually broken, expanded more for the relationally broken, and then it was pretty much decided that ah, what the heck, EVERYONE could use some Living Waters.

Because some of us need healing. Some of us REALLY need healing. Some of us want to know how to relate to others better. Some of us just want to hear the Lord better. And just about all of us aren't satisfied with the way our lives are, and have decided that we want more of what God has for us.

Anyways, we were told that the next four weeks of the course are the most difficult, and to stick with it. I can already tell it's not going to be easy... I've heard quite a few comments on how hard it is to discover just how broken you really are and to muster up the strength to come back to another class and be broken open again. Living Waters is known for being a pretty intense course.

Needless to say, I'm a little morbidly fascinated at how things will go.

So I find it to be excellent timing that I found this poem right at the beginning of the class. It's pretty encouraging to me, and even if you aren't going through something absolutely gut-wrenching at the moment, it's still beautiful. And it will probably be all the more frustrating and beautiful when things do get tough.

I already have the ominous feeling that sometime in the next four weeks, I may come back to this post and promptly attempt to delete this post and pretend it never happened. If you're reading this, you're obligated to not let that happen.

And the poem is this...

Don't Quit 

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will, 

When the road you're trudging seems all uphill,

When the funds are low and the debts are high,

 And you want to smile, but you have to sigh, 

When care is pressing you down a bit, 

Rest, if you must, but don't you quit. 

Life is queer with its twists and turns,

 As every one of us sometimes learns, 

And many a failure turns about, 

When he might have won had he stuck it out; 

Don't give up though the pace seems slow—

You may succeed with another blow. 

Often the goal is nearer than, 

It seems to a faint and faltering man, 

Often the struggler has given up, 

When he might have captured the victor's cup, 

And he learned too late when the night slipped down, 

How close he was to the golden crown. 

Success is failure turned inside out—

The silver tint of the clouds of doubt, 

And you never can tell how close you are, 

It may be near when it seems so far, 

So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit—

It's when things seem worst that you must not quit.