I can't believe that I missed the birthday of one of my favorite singers yesterday--Rebecca St. James. I've been a big fan of Miss St. James' for a while now and I heard on the radio that her b'day was coming up. But somewhere in the muddled mess that is my brain, I thought her birthday was today, not yesterday.
Shows you what I know...
Now, before I get going too much farther on this post, let me warn my faithful readers that this is gonna be a long one. And it's going to be a bit different and a bit more personal that some of the stuff I post here. I know, I know...I'm that wacky guy who loves TV too much and reads more than he should. But I feel like this is something I really want to say and since this is my blog, after all, I figured why not? But it's not my usually, happy go lucky posting and I do share a bit about my own personal faith and my Christian walk.
Rebecca St James
I've been a big fan of Rebecca's for a couple of years now. I don't think it'd be going too far to say she is, by far, my favorite female singer--not just from the contemporary Christian scene but from all genres. I'd have to say that if you asked me to pick a favorite song that she does, I'd be hard pressed to do so. To go total fan-boy here, I am a fan of all her songs and each one is a favorite of mine. But it's not just that her music is great, it's the message behind it that really gets to me.
But what really gets me about Rebecca and her music is the huge impact it had on my life back in a time when I really, really needed to hear the message she had. I am not one of those people who hears a song by Shania Twain and says, "Oh yeah, Shania is talking about me in this song..." but I do feel as though, at times in my life, some of Rebecca's song have spoken directly to me and hit me exactly where I live.
One of those times was the summer of 2001.
There's not a lot of things I like to remember about the summer and fall of 2001. Yes, Tennessee beat Florida in the Swamp, sending Steve Spurrier packing to the NFL and there were some good things that happened, but overall, it's not one of those periods in my life that I'd be programming into the DeLorean to go back and visit if I had the choice. It was a hard time for me personally--my grandfather was extremely ill, we nearly lost my sister and my dad was in the Pentagon on September 11th. Needless to say, our family was under just a little bit of stress.
Now, before all this turmoil had started in my life, I'd re-discovered Rebecca St. James' music. I'd been in one of my favorite stores on the planet McKay's Used Books and CDs one day, browing the CDs when I came across a copy of Rebecca's CD "God" for a very reasonable price. I picked it up and figured, "Hey, why not?" and bought it. I put it into my car's CD player and started listening. I admit I was familiar with the title track when I purchased it, but not a lot of the other songs on the disc. So I had no idea how the fourth song on the CD would impact me--it was called "Speak to Me" and it became for a kind of a prayer over the next weeks, months and years of my life. I think I listened to that CD at least three times that day--once driving around and twice while playing some games on my computer. I even listened to it again on the way to church the next morning. If it were possible to wear out a CD, I'd probably have done it with this one the first weekend.
It took me all of 24 hours before I was scouring music stores and buying up all of Rebecca's CDs that I could find. I pretty quickly assembled as close to a complete collection of her CDs that were in print as possible and I began to discover just how much I loved her music. Now, I'm a fan of contemporary Christian music and I love it. But there are times with some artists that I find myself wondering if they're not a bit like Cartman from an episode of South Park a few years ago. In the episode, Cartman forms a Christian band because he's told that he can have less talent, but make a lot of money just by changing a few lyrics in a song to God or Jesus. In the end, Cartman's true nature shows through at exactly the wrong time and his career comes crashing to a halt. Now, I'm not saying that every contemporary Christian artist is like that, but I've heard a few in my time that I honestly wonder about.
I've never had that feeling with Rebecca. Listening to her music, I found myself being touched by her ministry. This wasn't just a way to make money for her, but was her way of using her talents to glorify God. And she wrote a lot of her own songs, which greatly appealed to me. I honestly think I tried to wear out her CDs "God" and "Transform." (both of which still get a heavy rotation in my CD player to this day).
I found her music during what I like to call the calm before the storm of 2001. It helped me and like I said, it really hit some depths in my heart and soul. But I had no idea how much her ministry through music would help me in the days and weeks to come. I remember going on a looooong road trip to Memphis with my sister to visit my grandfather in the hospital and help Mom out and listening to the music with Susan. We both enjoyed it and we had a good time bonding as brother and sister a few weeks before we nearly lost her.
This week, our minister, Thad, talked about times in your life when we face trials in our Christian walk. God sometimes withdraws a bit from a bit and we don't feel His presense as strongly in our lives. This is meant to be a time of growth in our lives--not only personally but in our walk wit Him. We have to acknowledge that we've moved apart and get back with God. There is a scriptural basis for this--when Jesus is being crucified, he shouts out "My God, why have you forsaken me?"
During that time in 2001, this happened to me. I know it now looking back. In the midst of it all, I couldn't have told you what was happening, but I knew something was going on.
Until one day, while driving home from work. I remember the exact place I was too. I'd just exited at Walker Springs Rd in Knoxville, passing the shopping center with Books-a-Million in it and getting ready to turn left onto Kingston Pike to head toward the Y for my daily regiment of swimming laps. SportsTalk was in a commerical (it was close to football sesaon and I was eager for things to get started) and so I flipped over to the contemporary Christian music station. As I did, the DJ informed us that Rebecca St James had a new song and began to play it.
The song was "Breath" from her album "Worship God." I understand now that this is a song that is a popular song used a lot in contemporary worship and covered by many contemporary Christian artists. But that day in 2001, I'd not heard it before. Or at least not that I remembered.
It goes like this:
This is the air I breathe
This is the air I breathe
Your holy presence
Living in me
This is my daily bread
This is my daily bread
Your very word
Spoken to me
Chorus:
And I, I'm desperate for You
And I, I'm lost without You
Oh Lord, I'm lost without You
This is the air I breathe
This is the air I breathe
Your holy presence
Living in me
I can remember the first time I heard those words "And I, I'm desparate for You...and I'm, I'm lost without you." I can still remember the big yellow sign for the Disc Exchange and tearing up, realizing that I was lost and desparate for God. I pulled off the road as soon as I could as the song continued to play and sat there, just weeping. It was at that point, I realized that I'd gotten away from God and I was desparate for Him. And not desparate in that way that people had talked about you in high school--the gee, I couldn't get a date if I tried, desparate. I was just searching, yearning, needing God..and the thing was, He was there. He'd been there the whole time but like a fool I'd been trying to shoehorn Him into what I thought I needed instead of letting Him work His will in my life and follow where He led. I can say that day helped me to cry, to weep and to mourn about the things happening in my life, but it also led me to a new sense of peace as I renewed my commitment to follow God. To daily be desparate for Him and to not worry about what anyone else would think about my desparation.
That song, by Rebecca, put into words things that had been boiling under the surface for a long time...and brought them out. And it hit me where I lived and it changed my life. I know I've said that I don't really have an all-out favorite song that she does, but if I had to pick just one for the sheer transforming power it's had on my life, it's this one. It's one of my favorite songs now and it's been done by a lot of artists, including Michael W. Smith, but I have to admit I have a huge bias toward Rebecca's version of it.
So, that's just a little bit of why I love the music of Rebecca St. James. And why I am thankful that she has answered the call to share her gift in this way. I've never met her and I may never meet her. But if I do, someday, I'd like to go up, shake her hand and tell her this story about how her answering her call has impacted me and helped me hear mine better.
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UPDATE 1:15 CST: Reading some comments, I've received and re-reading some of the above paragraphs, I realized I didn't say what I was thinking as well as I should...but I'm gonna leave it and say this. At times in my life, I've gone into a testing of my faith. And while God is with me in that, part of it is that God lets me go off and do the test on my own...so, that I will realize that I am desparate for Him and have to be dependent on Him. My thing is--I will go into a test and think, yes, I can do it all on my own and this is when the test starts to get increasingly difficult....after all, it says that we will never be tested beyond what we can bear. So, I know there's no test I can't handle or pass, but part of the test is the continued re-realization that I can't do it all alone. And that is a huge part of what this test showed me...it showed me that I thought I could handle everything and be the reliable, rock solid person and all the while I was falling apart inside. It was only when I gave up all that I was holding onto and left it with God and stopped thinking I could do it all that I began to learn the lesson behind the test. Alas, I'm thick-headed and this will have be reinforced again and it has been at several points since 2001, though only one time as severely and as breaking me down to the very rock bottom of who I am...)
posted by Michael Hickerson at 7/27/2005 10:28:00 AM |
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