Donna’s Blog

Ever spread yourself too thin?  Ever feel like you are just need to breathe….to inhale and exhale deeply and feel refreshed and not immediately squeezed tight again by all the responsibilities tugging at you?

There’s a blog that I wanted to share with you.  She’s talking about those moments when you just need space.  It was a good reminder for me.  I hope it is for you, too, my friend.

“Everyone needs space.

To talk, breathe, and take off my shoes and wiggle my toes in the carpet or in the summer grass.

As I shuttle two little girls from school to play dates, from school to horse or dance lessons and then the soccer field, as we make the car our home for the day I have to remember that just as I need time to take a breath,

so do they.

They need the quiet of a bedroom full of afternoon sun and a pile of doll clothes to organize and fold. They need a white, blank sheet of paper with a bucket full of colored pencils and crayons tumbling out.

A spot to dream and draw.

They need a quiet backyard, no music, no television or iPhone games just to spread their mini dolls and horses wide in the bushes as they create fairy worlds out of sticks and leaves. The space to breathe.

And talk…

It happens at night when they are tucked in bed with a book and pillows piled high. The dryer is humming around the corner and the DVDs and computers have been put to sleep. The house is on it’s downward drift toward silence and my daughters begin to talk.

Answers of nothing or I don’t remember turn into full-fledged stories about lunch time laughter and sandbox interactions. Their minds begin to work

Silence and space and room begs deeper breaths and deeper conversation.

It’s hard to carve out the silence on days that I live in my car and nights that I spend catching up from the day over the sink of dishes or a basket of to-be-folded laundry. My spoken words dry up and turn into shortened answers without even a glance. My thoughts are swallowed by worry and lists and dates and The-Next-Thing-To-Do rather than the now and the here and the who.

Simple remedy: space.

A blank sheet of paper on my page of days.

An open territory to spread out my fences and lie back to watch the clouds. Sometimes I tell myself I need tall summer grass to do that.

But I don’t. Even in September’s structure I can find a place to stop.

An autumn afternoon with the conspicuous weight of the quiet of a peaceful house. The stars align in my world and everyone is happy for a couple minutes, quiet in the inner and outer silence and there is room

for all of us

to breathe and make a thought into a real conversation.”

visit Sarah’s blog at www.sarahmarkley.com

To look at life through the eyes of a child….to believe in something when everything around you is telling you not too….to keep the innocent trust….

not as easy as I once believed.

When i was a teenager, i sang a song called “Faith is like a child”…one thing simple childlike faith and nothing more, that’s all jesus Christ has ever asked us for…..

I loved that song.  I loved singing that song.  I believed that song.  I never thought I’d have to fight to live it out.

I thought it would always be easy to look at life with eyes that would always continue to believe that God is in control of the circumstances and I would never have to fear.

Maybe “easy” was where I was a little off.

Because there are days when fear threatens to overwhelm.  Days where it’s “easy” to shake my fist at the sky and demand God to do something…to show up at least.  Days where I doubt everything I was taught in Sunday school. 

“Jesus loves me this i know”……really? 

“For the Bible tells me so”…..then why can’t i feel it?

Trust.  Innocently trust.  Put my hand in His and trust.  Hold on and trust.  No matter what you see, trust.

Just like a little child knows when she holds up her hands, daddy will pick her up.

Rewriting kind of feels like this to me…..going back and scratching out everything and starting over.

Okay, maybe not erasing everything….but you have to be willing to do that.  You have to be willing to look at the whole song and say “what one word, or one phrase is the heart of this song.”  “What else is just words?”

When I first started going to writing workshops and they taught about rewriting, I was thinking, “you’ve to go be kidding?”  “Really?”  “How can you write and write and write, then turn a song in to a publisher, and be told to rewrite it again?”

Turns out, it’s true.  And you know what?  It always makes for a better song.

Because it also turns out that what you’ve usually written the first time, is just a rough draft.

Especially what I’ve written is just a rough draft, because i usually have a lot to say and i just have to get it all down.  And then i have to refine it.  And then refine it again.  And then, maybe it’s ready for my publisher to see and to tell me to refine it some more.

And now that i get that, it’s actually not so scary to rewrite.  It actually feels almost good to be whittling away at a song, hunting for the most beautiful parts and chizzeling away what doesn’t need to be there.

And that’s how I ended up with this version of “The Empty Tomb”:

Where is dark

Where is death

Where is sadness, grief, fear      

Where is doubt

Where is loss

Where is deepest despair              

 (chorus)

The empty tomb fills life with hope

My savior lives, Jesus my Lord

Resurrection power, no grave could hold

The Son of God bursts forth, behold!

The empty tomb

Here is light

Here is life

Here is truth to proclaim

Here is joy

Here is might

Here is love that overcame

The assignment was to look at some Bible verses given to us and to find a song.

The Bible verses were arranged by topic and the topics were divided by weeks and each topic needed a song.  Or something like that.

I read through all the material and decided to go back and highlight some of the verses that, well, that seemed to spark a song idea.

I highlighted a few verses and then decided which ones I was “feeling” that day.

Then it was time to start putting some phrases down on a page.  What were these verses saying to me?  How did they make me feel?  How could I translate the story in a new way?

Mary; the garden; Jesus’ body missing; the hope.

Here’s what I came up with:

The quiet path covered in darkness

Her footsteps slow as she draws near

Her one desire to see her master and find his tomb

 through her tears

What can this be?  Her heart is heavy

The stone that kept her savior safe

Is pushed aside and as she enters

There ‘s no body in the grave

Pre chorus

“why are you searching child among the dead”?

Your living Lord is Risen

Chorus

The empty tomb

Fills life with hope

Our savior lives

Forevermore

We lift our praise

And worship you

Forever thankful

For the empty tomb

They have to see it for themselves

Can this be true what she has said

How can it be, after Calvary

There was darkness there was death

a tiny seed of hope began to grow

When they saw the stone

I decided it wasn’t too bad. 

I sent it off to my publisher.

I finally heard back. 

They liked the song idea, but it was a little wordy.  Could i write something more like this guy….

Do you know who that is?

That’s right, David Crowder! 

Do you know how amazing he is?  His whole band is?

That night I went to the local Christian bookstore and bought the latest DCB cd and listened to it that evening and the next morning.

Then I got an idea of how to change the song.

More on that tomorrow….

Ever heard the joke where someone passes on some news (gossip) to someone else and then that person says, “tell me more”, and they reply “i’ve already told you more than i know!”? (insert laugh)

Well, I’m trying to figure out how to tell you what I know and not MORE than I know! (insert laugh again!  but bigger one this time!!)

And of course, in this case, it’s not gossip….it really is news.  And good news at that! (insert clapping noise!)

I told you back in July that I found out that I got two cuts on a project coming out for Lillenas Publishing Company.   As soon as the project is released I can tell you more about that….

Anyway, after the songs are selected, the task turns to recording the music (tracks) and then adding the vocals. 

This particular project, from my understanding, is going to include several artists. 

One of those artists is Dan Dean, from this group…

If I’m not mistaken, he’s the lead singer….so he’s what you hear when you listen to PC&D.  Kind of like Mac Powell is what you hear when you listen to Third Day and  Richie McDonald is what you hear when you listen to Lone Star. 

He was excited to be a part of this project and was sent several songs to select from to sing.

I got a call and found out that Dan Dean chose two songs….guess which two he chose? 

That’s right!  He wanted to sing my songs!

Oh my stars!  That was a cool day!!!!

So this week he has been in the studio recording those songs.  I was able to “listen” in for a few minutes via the phone being held up to speakers.  It was enough to give me permanent goosebumps on my legs!!!  (well okay, they finally went away….but everytime i think about it, they come back!!)

I mean seriously, I am hearing MY WORDS being sung by Dan Dean of Phillips, Craig & Dean.  This is just too much!  There’s NO WAY I could have dreamed of this just ten years ago when i wrote that first song.

And then guess what? 

As if the day couldn’t get any better, I received a phone call right after lunch. 

It was Dan Dean.

Calling me.

To say he liked my songs.

I think i said something like, “duh….yeah, okay….thanks”.

With words that amazing, i just know he can’t wait to sit down and write a song with me!

And you know what’s funny?  The amount doesn’t even matter!

It’s just the achievement of something i only dreamed of almost ten years ago when i wrote my first song.

When i first started writing, i had so many people give me advice about entering contests, and lots of warnings about copywriting my songs so that no one would “steal” one.

I did appreciate all the advice, but the two things that were on my mind when i was writing were:  would my songs ever be good enough to sing to anyone?  and would i ever be able to write for anyone else?  (honestly, at that time, i was too scared to ever dream i could write for someone else AND be published!)

When the contract came in the mail for the song…that was such a cool day!

Then the book arrived with the song on page 54 and THAT was a cooler day!

And now the first check has arrived and that really rocks!

Time to set more dreams that i’m totally scared of…….

There’s just something about this song that makes you want to sing along…..

…..and the movie wasn’t too bad either!!

I\’ll Fly Away

I’m reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s newest book:  “Committed” …a skeptic makes peace with marriage.  I read something i just have to share with you.

Here’s the set up in abbreviated form:

They want to get married.  She decides to write out her list of worst character traits…just so he’s sure what he’s about to walk into.  He’s just finished reading her list.  (and for the sake of understand the following paragraphs……His name is Felipe;he’s 15 years her senior; he is in the jewelry business.)

“Felipe didn’t answer for a long time.  Then he said, ‘When i used to go down to Brazil to buy gemstones, I would often buy something they call ‘a parcel’.  A parcel is this random collection of gems that the miner, or the wholesaler, or whoever is bullshitting you puts together.  A typical parcel would contain, I don’t know, maybe twenty or thirty aquamarines at once.  Supposedly, you get a better deal that way–buying them all in a bunch–but you have to be careful, because of course the guy is trying to rip you off.  He’s trying to unload his bad gemstones on you by packaging them together with a few really good ones. 

So when i first started in the jewelry business (Felipe continued), I used to get in trouble because i’d get too excited about the one or two perfect aquamarines in the parcel, and i wouldn’t pay as much attention to the junk they threw in there.  After i got burned enough times, i finally got wise and learned this:  You have to ignore the perfect gemstones.   Don’t even look at them twice because they’re blinding.  Just put them away and have a careful look at the really bad stones.  Look at them for a long time, and then ask yourself honestly, “Can I work with these?  Can I make something out of this?”  Otherwise, you’ve just spent a whole lot of money on one or two gorgeous aquamaries buried inside a big heap of worthless crap.

It’s the same with relationships (he continues).  People always fall in love with the most perfect aspects of each other’s personalities.  Who wouldn’t?  Anybody can love the most wonderful parts of another person.  But that’s not the clever trick.  The really clever trick is this:  Can you accept the flaws?  Can you look at your partner’s faults honestly and say, “I can work around that.  I can make something out of that?”  Because the good stuff is always going to be there, and it’s always going to be pretty and sparkly, but the crap underneath can ruin you.”

She she asks, “are you saying you’re clever enough to work around my worthless, junky, crappy bits?

And he says, “What i’m trying to say darling, is that i’ve been watching you carefully for a long time already, and I believe I can accept the whole parcel.”

I just love that!!!!  I wonder if they’ll make a movie of this book too? 

And don’t forget…”Eat, Pray, Love” comes out in theatres this weekend!