Memories: Forget About It
I grew up in a pretty solid Christian home. My upbringing was great. I don’t have the typical terrifying story of childhood that so many of my friends have. My struggle has never really been the struggle of my peers. But it has been a struggle.
If you’ve been following me long enough, then you’ve known that I love music. You also know that I serve as an elder at my parents church…and I love that too. I’ve been in this stage where I’m trying to pull both callings together. On, some days I feel like it’s gonna happen. On other days, I feel overwhelmed. During this process, I’ve discovered a lot about myself. I need to let go of a lot of memories.
I’ll dive deeper into this in a later post, but my past experiences with music and with ministry have really scarred me. I didn’t know that I was scarred until I slowed down for a little bit and allowed myself to feel. I noticed that I wasn’t confident in my craft. People around me called it humility, but in reality I honestly felt like I didn’t deserve anything more than rocking local shows. I knew that I was good, but I didn’t think I was THAT good. (Again, reasons coming later.) I didn’t trust anyone. If anything had to be done, then I had to do it because I wasn’t going to let anyone take advantage of me again. I was jaded. I got used to people not supporting me. Success was going to be self-made and a sweet payback to every “hater” who ever thought that I couldn’t do it…or to every person who didn’t fully support me for that matter. I felt like my art didn’t have any credibility outside of the agenda of preaching the gospel. The less “death, burial and resurrection” that I had in my songs, the more secular it was. And we just don’t do secular where I’m from. Bad memories for me created a crazy mindset and learned behavior.
Releasing this song was really therapeutic for me. It’s opposite of my hardcore sound and I can listen to it and remind myself to let all of that stuff go. I needed this for me. It’s a sign that I’m letting it all go. There are so many layers to me (or anyone for that matter). I’m definitely gonna unpack some of this stuff for you very soon. You’re not going to believe half of the stuff that I’ll tell you. But just know this…we’re all the same. Clergy and laymen. Rich and poor. We may look different but we all have the same struggles. We all have the same fears to overcome. We all have to deal with our past. We can’t let the past haunt us. It will disable our future.
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