Not Too Long
“For I am about to fall, and my pain is constantly with me...
Hurry to help me, Lord my Savior...”
Let’s talk about why I made my EP, ‘Those Other Psalms’.
All four of these psalms just spoke to me. Plus, I found the idea of putting a few off-the-beaten-path psalms to song very inspiring; it felt like a fun challenge, and a worthy endeavor.
I have not always found myself in religious settings where I feel freedom and safety to be honest about the whole range of human emotions that I feel. I’ve encountered a lot of social pressure to have it all together (or to have the appearance of having it all together) in order to be seen as someone who takes their faith seriously. Something that I appreciate about these lesser known psalms is that they are not held captive by those same social pressures — they are prayers to God, and they are often raw, and even offensive. They give voice to doubt, fears, anger, confusion, exasperation; they grapple with fundamental questions about the character of God.
Photo from our trip to Tucson, AZ
I’ve talked to enough people to know that I am not the only person who feels this way. And far too often, I lack the courage to say these things out loud (or on the internet). So I thank God that these types of psalms are included in the Bible. To see King David expressing the same sentiments that are buried in the depths of my heart that I’d rather not admit to, and know that he was still called a man after God’s own heart — it gives me much needed courage to say (or sing) those unpleasant thoughts to the Lord, bringing them into the light of His love.
Plus — and this is not a small point — the majority of church and Jewish history has used the whole Psalter in their corporate worship gatherings. In other words, they were not singing hymns of praise only, they also would visit the imprecatory psalms every now and again. (Don’t worry, I emailed, like, seven pastor friends of mine to fact check that, and they said that is accurate. This blog is a reliable media outlet, you see.)
Photo from our trip to Tucson, AZ
Real quick: Let’s talk about the musical side of the EP
When 2021 was coming to a close, and I was thinking through dreams and goals for 2022, I decided I did not want to release any new music in 2022. I put out an album and an EP in 2020, and then another album in 2021, so I wanted to take a year for development — I wanted to improve my skills as an instrumentalist and also I wanted to learn more about production. To that end, I took an online class on music production, and it just worked out that at the same time I was wanting to practice a lot of my new production skills, I had these few random psalm songs that had kind of written themselves. And that is how this came to be.
I played and recorded everything on my own, and then I got some final-touches advice on the mix, as well as help with mastering from my friend, Bryan Vanderpool. I was in and out of Bryan’s studio in a couple hours, the day before our family headed to Arizona for a vacation. It was there that Matt helped me envision how this EP would look — and he took the photo that we ended up using as the cover art at a really wonderful park in Tucson — which is the same place where I took the photos included in this blog post.
Not Too Long
The song, “Not Too Long”, based on Psalm 38, ties a lot of these concepts together. It is not easy to sit with your honest feelings before the Lord — especially when you wish you didn’t feel this way, or think these things. So when David says, “my pain is constantly with me” and “hurry to help me, Lord my Savior”… I feel that!
If you get nothing else from me as an artist, a songwriter, and a person, get this: it is worth it to be honest before the Lord. It is worth it to grapple with the deeper questions that haunt you. It is worth it to say those things out loud that you wish never had crossed your mind — you can say it to Him because He knows it already, and you are safe in His love. The essence of faith includes an element of uncertainty — otherwise it wouldn’t be faith, it would be sight. Lean into your questions, trust God to keep you even though you have cracks in your spiritual understanding. I could go on, but I think those reading this are hoping that this blog post will wrap up in “not too long”. ;-)
I posted lyric videos for each of my new songs to YouTube. Watch the one for “Not Too Long” above. Watch the whole EP here.