I somewhat envy songwriters who discovered their passion early in life. 

Can you have a passion under the surface, lying dormant and then something ignite it?  Or did it just take time for me to develop this passion?

I tell people that I started writing in 2002……and that’s partly true because I started writing “consistently and on purpose” in 2002, but there were other songs.

Probably every kid does this, but my sister and I entertained ourselves by making up songs.  Every afternoon the school bus dropped us off on our dirt road and we had a little ways to walk to make it home.  So, we passed the time by making up songs.  We’d take turns; i would start one verse and then my sister would sing the next. 

The first song I remember writing down was one I wrote when I was in the Valentine Pageant at TNC in 1985.  Everyone had to perform a talent.  I don’t know where I got the idea, but I thought it would be funny to dress up like the old Carol Burnette “mop bucket lady” (can i see your hands if you remember that?) and re-write the words to “Home on the Range” and make it about “Home on the Range” (a stove) and actually SIT on a stove while I sang.  I guess you had to be there, but it was pretty funny (i think there’s a video somewhere)…..and hey,I won the contest (which earned me a crown, a dozen roses and a Bible that I still carry to this day).

Fast forward three years.  I’m married and Ben is in charge of the Sunday School contest.  It’s called “Lift High the Torch” and somehow we decide we need a theme song and I write one to be sung every Sunday of the contest.  I bought some paper with measure lines on it and wrote out the whole score by hand.  

Fast forward another three years.  Our church is sending a mission team to Argentina.  We decide we need a theme song to keep the church motivated as we raise money.  I write one.  We sing it.  We also make cookbooks to sell to raise funds and the song is printed in the front of the book.  Cool.

I’m busy raising kids and it’s not until about eight years later when our church decides to create a mission statement that i write again.  It’s “Lighting our world one heart at a time.”  So of course, a theme song is needed.  I get inspired in a board meeting as we talk about it and write the song.

Somewhere along the way, you’d think I would have seen a pattern.  You’d think I would have not been able to put the pen down.  But I did.  I would write, we would sing, I would stop.  Until I wrote a song in 2002.

What was different that January?  Maybe it’s because the song wasn’t FOR an event.  It wasn’t for a talent show, it wasn’t for a contest, but it was something I saw on t.v. that moved me enough to get up and write about it.  And I had to write until I got it right.  And something happened when I began to work on that song……i couldn’t finish it before i found myself writing another one…..and then another one…..and then another one.  I think I wrote close to 30 songs that first year.

Then things began to happen faster than I could predict.  I sang a few of my songs and people liked them.  I recorded a few of my songs at a friends house/studio and people bought them.  Another friend invited me to sing at her church and I met my future producer/publisher/mentor/person.  I registered for a writing conference that answered questions I didn’t know I had and opened doors to new friendships and great writing partnerships.  By 2004 I was recording a CD that included ten original songs and would do the same thing again in 2006.

It has been incredible so far and I feel like I am just getting started!  I have SO much to learn and SO much growing to do as a writer.  What I really want is to just sit and write all day long, every day, and then write some more.  And write and write and write………it’s a passion-thing.