It Was a Hard Time Weeping Over You
I released a breakup song.
That might seem weird coming from someone who is happily married, but there are lots of types of breakups: you can walk away from a toxic environment, you can quit a job that was destroying your mental health, or you can walk away from any type of abusive relationship — be it romantic or otherwise. “Hard Time” is for anyone who has gone through anything like that; for anyone who knows the pain of leaving something or someone that you didn’t want to leave, even though in that case, leaving was far better than staying.
Photo by Liz Brown
I spent a long time
clinging onto you
I was afraid to release this song. It’s one thing to write a song in your bedroom by yourself, it’s another to share a snippet of it online or play it at a couple shows, but it’s a much larger step to record it, release it, and actively tell people to go listen to it. That last step brings about a much deeper level of ownership — and in all honesty, it kicked up a decent amount of anxiety within me.
So why did I do it, then?
I wrote “Hard Time” last fall, a couple weeks before I played a house show where I opened for my friends, The Well Pennies. Since The Well Pennies are not a Christian band, I wanted to choose the songs of mine that have the broadest appeal, so “Hard Time” made sense to add to the set. Of course, that was the song I got the most feedback on from the show, including lots of inquiries as to whether I would record it during my studio dates the following week. “Oh, no no no no no,” I said.
A couple days later, I shared a snippet of “Hard Time” online and had a few people DM me to ask if I’d record it (which is not something that happens very often).
And finally, during a break on one of my studio days, I was editing a podcast episode. In this particular episode, “The Restorative Practice of Lament”, the guests talked about the benefits of lamentation, especially lamenting as a community. They also spoke about how they experienced a type of communal lamentation in many faith communities, but often found a deep resistance to that within the white evangelical context. That last point resonated with what I have experienced as well (in general; there are certainly exceptions).
And yet there I was: I had a song that was written as a lamentation about something very hard that I went through, but I didn’t want to release it. This song doesn’t end in praise, it doesn’t tie in any neat little spiritual lessons; it just exists to lament, to give voice to pain, and to call something that was bad, “bad”. Yet I wasn’t planning to say these things out loud; perhaps for the same reasons why I’d never felt there was much room for lamentation in my church context — fear of being dismissed, fear of my pain being minimized, fear of being gaslit, fear of being judged and labeled as a bad Christian, etc.
I finished editing that podcast episode and started getting ready to go back into the studio that evening, feeling like maybe the Holy Spirit was prompting me to record this not-very-spiritual song, when my producer, Bryan, texted me to say that he was out to dinner with some friends who were also at that house show, and they were asking him whether or not I was gonna record “the breakup song”.
So that pushed me over the edge, and we recorded it that evening.
I don’t really care
how you tell the story
I’m just glad I got away
It is a whole process to free yourself from things that once held you captive. I am still walking through that process. But, I do feel like writing, then recording, then releasing, and now promoting “Hard Time”, are all steps that are taking me in the direction toward freedom and healing. And for that, I am very thankful.
(…So maybe that’s the thing that ties this up into a neat little spiritual message…)
Listen to “Hard Time” on Spotify