Each Shade and Hue

I n the early 80s, I came up with a song title that I wrote down in case I ever got married: “I Choose You.” I never wrote it; I just had the title and maybe a couple of ideas jotted down. Fast forward to 1990. My friend Scott told me he had a friend getting married---in two days, mind you---and the bride and groom had no one to play for the wedding. Would I be willing? I had made it my personal mission statement at that point never to play in another wedding (battle scars from previous ones), but Scott persisted, I liked Scott, so I caved. Only then did he tell me that the wedding was an hour away ... and there was a rehearsal the night before. This was escalating quickly. The night of the rehearsal, I was told to play whatever I wanted because they had no preferences. They were truthfully the easiest married-couple-to-be I had ever dealt with. But then Scott came back with hook #2:  They were really bummed because they didn’t have the anyone to sing at their wedding. Would I be w...

W hen we can, we like to add a little history or story of our experiences and thoughts with the songs we have written. I am going to begin this one with a day I flipped on the radio and heard someone I knew singing a song that hit a familiar spot with me. I realized it was a song I had actually begun with the listed writer. He took it, ran with it, the other person sang it, put it on the radio, and I was erased from the entire history of it. It turned out to be a beautiful song, and I actually had on my playlist for a long time (no, I’m not going to name it). As time went on, we heard stories of people who do some pretty shady maneuvers to get writer’s credit on the final recording. We decided that if it was even possible to be overly ethical with these kinds of things, we were going to do that. That brings me to this one. A guy said, “Hey, I had this idea for a song. It is like … the woman at the well went to the well looking for water, but she left there with the whole well. Could yo...

M any people hear this phrase from time to time: "But for the grace of God, there go I." We never liked that saying much, because it usually is used in a context of, "Wow. That person is really going through it. Glad I'm not them." As though they were automatically opted in for some black hole of a life plan, we got the one with the daisies on it, and it could never happen to us . (In the worst part of the stroke saga, a woman actually said this to Kim lol: "Every time I think my life is hard, I think to myself, 'Well, it could be worse. I could be Kim.'" Had to sit with that one for a while, lol.) The grace of God is not some spiritual pass that helps us dodge the bullet we deem intended for others. Grace is not the avoidance of hard things. We have come to learn through the many difficult trials we have faced that the grace of God is actually the supernatural ability He seems to impart to help us navigate the worst of circumstances and make i...

P eople are very into finding "Easter eggs" in movies and video games: things the writers/producers put in that are only noticeable for those who might take the time to look for them and figure out why they are there. Now that I am a little older, I can look back through the music God gave to me and see those things woven into it. We often sit and listen to some of these lines and say, "Whoa. Can you believe this was written years before such-and-such event? Can you believe how relevant that is for now??" And then more years would go by, and it would be an entirely different set of circumstances that would cause us to see it on an even deeper level. I am blown away that as a young man of 24 or so, I wrote these words. Through the years God has laid it on my heart to keep my music tucked away and hidden to save for later. There were years through our 20s and 30s where we would hear sermons about Abraham and Sarah and think, "Wow, is this going to extend to our o...

  P roverbs 13:12 tells us that "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life." This song is for those who feel flattened, either by circumstances you put yourself in, or circumstances that just hit out of nowhere and feel like they have sucked out all your hope. It is for that valley of dry bones (Ezekiel 37) where you ask, "Can anything good even come out of this at this point? It died, got buried, was dug up, the buzzards picked it clean, the sun baked it, and now it is dust. It is OVER." Kind of like Mary and Martha saying, "Jesus, if you had just come as soon as we asked you to help, Lazarus would still be alive! Why did you wait so long??? He has been in the tomb 4 days and has most likely already started to rot!" (John 11) Good thing we serve a God who makes the impossible, possible and resurrects dead things. When all your friends write you off as crazy and leave you for dead, when the phone does not ring and you fe...

I have heard people refer to "my life before vs. my life after" incidents. This song was written a month after one of ours. We were both pretty low. Kim was busy packing up our first house and dealing with our two babies, and I was on the floor next to our bed, processing the fact we were about to lose our first home. We were pretty sure we were leaving---we just did not know where we were going. We were still hoping deep down that God would send someone to the door with that last-minute miracle save we had seen happen for so many other people. The saying about hindsight being 20/20 can be easily applied here. NOW I can put these lyrics and the verses that inspired this song together with the circumstances that followed and see we were about to go the harder way around for this one.  It actually ended up being one of those shipwreck things where the ship sinks, you get stung by a few jellyfish, gnawed on by a shark, whacked against a coral reef, then spit out onto a beach wit...

W e are told in Scripture that the way God thinks seems like foolishness to those who do not have God's Spirit to help them see things from His perspective (1 Corinthians 2:14). Even to those of us who follow the Holy Spirit's direction and do believe in Jesus, God's ways can seem extremely difficult to understand, until we take the time to ask Him questions, walk out circumstances, and learn to see things from a higher perspective. Scripture is full of people whose lives did not always seem to align with the dream God had given them. Abraham and Sarah aged out of their fertile years, in opposition to the promise of an heir. Joseph languished in a prison, in opposition to his dream of ruling. Elijah was running for his life, hiding in caves to avoid Jezebel, in opposition to God's promise to eliminate the threat. In my life, this looked like a pile of promises I'd been given about the music God had entrusted to my wife and me, only to wake up in an ICU paralyzed, un...

T his chorus was written in 1998 while juggling enormous fallout after two particularly tumultuous years in our lives. Exactly one year after writing this song, we experienced a category-4 hurricane that was being predicted to hit the coastal town we were living in at the time. It was strange that that hurricane's name was Bret, and the newspaper splashed across the front page, "Bret takes the city by storm!" (They spelled my name wrong!) I remember the mandatory evacuation we had to adhere to. That exit route took nearly ten hours to travel what was normally a two-hour trip inland. That storm and that period of time made me think of the story about Jesus, a storm at sea, and Peter in Matthew 14:22-33. This song talks about the faith we must continually must place in Jesus over and over and over again, regardless how our circumstances appear. Peter showed us how easy it is to put our eyes on circumstances and allow fear to sink us faster than a 25-pound anchor. The bridge...

 This is one of the first songs I ever wrote. It is a very short chorus, written for my church in the late 80s. I dug it out, blew off the dust, and polished it up a bit.  It is reminiscent of Micah 6:8 where, in an era where law reigned supreme, and people had a lot of lists to remember, God still boiled it down to this: Do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with God. He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justly, To love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God? -Micah 6:8 To listen to this song, click below:

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good testimony. By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible. By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts; and through it he being dead still speaks. By faith Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death, “and was not found, because God had taken him”; for before he was taken he had this testimony, that he pleased God. But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Hebrews 11:1-6 Kim traveled in a singing group in college. One of the guys in the group was John. John was the personification of the happy, golden retriever guy. He lived close by and would s...

  J ohn 10:27 says, "My sheep know my voice, and I know them, and they follow me." With full understanding that people take this off on tangents and get wacky with it, sing "God told me" as a license for manipulating others, Jesus Himself said that His sheep know His voice. The fact that people mishandle/misuse it does not make it less valid, it just calls for keener discernment. Jesus gave us criteria to use to discern His voice and to decide who is listening and who is not. Ask yourself, "Do I truly know the voice of Jesus? Can I discern conviction of the Holy Spirit? When I do realize He is speaking to me, do I follow and obey that?" To hear this song, click below:

T his song came about in the early spring of 1985. I was still in college and had written a song I wanted to record and preserve. Doing so back then took a lot more creative juggling than it does current day, but I am an out-of-the-box thinker ha, ha. It was the hours after spring break began at the college I was attending, and the campus had already cleared out of students. I remember to this day: thousands of feet of cabling linked the auditorium father grand piano to the school radio station through the campus hallways. I thought, "Hmmmm....piano linked to recording devices. This can work." Primitive recording method intact, all I needed was a female singer to finish the duet. My co-writer, Glen, scoured the campus looking for anyone to fit that bill. Enter Ellie. Ellie was a radio station DJ that worked there with me. Glen found her with one hour to spare before her departure for the holiday. I taught Ellie the song, and we were able to record it with minutes to spare bef...

But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold. Job 23:10 To listen to this song, click below:  

L uke 19:40 should be a reality check for any of us who thinks for even a second that God "needs" anything we have to offer. He put something in each person and gave us a chance to give it back to Him in a way that helps other people around us. A lot of people misuse what they have been given. What if we do not use it properly? Scripture says God can get it out of a rock. Our gifts should not be something that are self-exalting or anything that makes us begin to think we deserve anything because of them. To whom much is given, much more will be required, after all (Luke 12:48). This song is not just about actual music. You have something someone needs. Find that and give 100 percent, at your own expense, expecting nothing in return, simply because it is a privilege to have been given it. Our reward is not in this life. To hear this song, click below:

In Durham, North Carolina, there’s a notorious bridge that has been nicknamed, “The Can Opener.” The bridge is a railroad trestle overpass located in a busy section of the city. Locals call it “The Can Opener” due to the number of drivers who have tall vehicles that still think they can squeeze under the low overpass. The signs warn, the flashing lights warn, the warning signals sound, but still there are hapless drivers that feel they will be exempted from the destruction. The “Can Opener” is also known as the “Eleven Foot 8” bridge. That is the clearance. Anything taller than 11’8” isn't going to clear and is going to peel, or completely destroy, their vehicle. There is a website that features the bridge, and the drivers who challenge the warnings. They say some try to be fast, some try to argue, but the bridge always wins. Some cave and heed the warnings and drive a different, safer route. With Jesus, there is only one route. You can choose His way or suffer the consequenc...