jLife

April 2006. I was all alone in a house in Brussels, Belgium. In the silence normally filled by three energetic children I had found catharsis in Switchfoot’s first three albums and was singing along to “Learning to Breathe.”

In March I had found out that the woman I loved was getting married. I still remember cooking myself a nice dinner, sitting at the table, and eating alone. The sight of that single burrito and a Belgian ale at a single place setting is one of the most depressing moments in my life.

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Hello, Good Morning, How you do? What makes your rising sun so new?

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I must have been 13 or 14 when I first heard “I Dare You to Move.” I told my brother I was feeling directionless and unmotivated and he gave me a pair of headphones and played something on his portable CD player. I don’t even remember hearing the music. All I remember from that moment was a strange blue CD cover with people who had TVs for heads.

I got on board with the band around the time of “The Beautiful Letdown.” By that time they were already big and being played on the radio. The music connected with me in a way that no sermon, no worship song, and no other person could. It was as if his words were resonating with my own thoughts, dreams, and emotions.

I struggled a lot with loneliness and feeling very different from my classmates during that time. I was in church, in youth group, but there was no one else who was really asking the same questions or facing the same problems as I did. I shut down a lot of my emotions and kept mostly to myself. I didn’t have the capacity to share who I was, nor did I want to.

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Grow, grow where you are. Anchor your roots underneath. Doubt Your doubts. And believe your beliefs.

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It may seem silly to try and tell your life story based on a band. But when you find something resonant with your soul, you want to hold on to it, even pay homage to its effects in your life. I’m Twenty-two now. My closest friends are really my family. They know the most about me, they know the real me that was buried beneath a nice guy during adolescence and is now slowly being recovered.

I wrote this in an email to my family and friends. I haven’t even seen the new Switchfoot album and I’m already using the title to describe where I am in my life:

Hello Hurricane!

Another memory of me and John. It was back in my high school days when the local school administrator had not cancelled school and my parents had thus felt the need to risk our lives under the wrath of a mighty hurricane. We were all on the lower level of my house, (Virginia homes don’t have basements) and John and I were not satisfied with the food Mom had available. So the two of us took some hotdogs out onto the screened-in porch, light up our little gas grill and try to barbeque with hurricane-force winds blowing around us.

There it is. In the midst of a storm that brought down trees, rained down water, and screeched around us with wind John and I were making food, bringing a little bit of joy (however absurd it seemed) into our lives through hot dogs.

And I hope to do the same this year. There are so many things swirling around me this year. Jobs and girls and college legacy and overcommitment oh my! And I’m ready to fly into that hurricane, because as many of you my friends know, at the very center of the storm, in the eye is perfect calm. That’s right! Push through the chaos and the dangerously high winds and at the very center is peace and quiet.

I believe that there is an eye to my own storm. I want to live in that eye where God is. Get too busy, too stressed, and you move out of center into chaos and confusion. Stay in the center by praying, limiting commitments, and learning to have down time.

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You can find video of the song here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFkAR7v5A3c

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Yesterday I finally met my heroes after listening to music, watching their podcast, and reading interviews. It was the New York State Fair and the place was packed. After waiting in line for over an hour I realized that they were waiting at a table right down from the merch stand, and because my friend was waiting so long I was the next to go.

I asked the roadie, “Can they sign my shirt?” It was my favorite. Bright red, with the band logo embalzoned across the front. I took it off, slid it onto the table and prepared to meet my heroes with zero torso coverage. The rest is a blur. I remember that I had to keep moving but I did my best to babble and make conversation with all the members while they shook my hand and signed the shirt. Chad wanted to know my name, I told Jerome he looked tired, Drew made fun of my shirtless appearance, Tim graciously accepted my compliment of his fashion, and Jon took extra time to tell me about his favorite philosophers: Kierkegaard and his Dad.

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When I came to start Cornell I hated it. Freshman year, especially the first semester was miserable. I had blossomed in Europe’s bastion of culture, energy, and gourmet food. Cornell was stifling, aesthetically unpleasing, and miserably cold and gray. I still remember nights where I cried myself to sleep, not knowing why precisely. It didn’t help that the woman I loved had gotten married in early September, and that no one in my family wanted to hear me talk about it.

Then Oh! Gravity came out in December. I was struck by the difference in tone. Jon was still wrestling with social entropy like he did in “Lonely Nation.” But there was a joy there, a playful wrestling with it. It was like he was describing a complex riddle that he already knew the answer to. He was mocking the question.

It would be too simple to say that Oh! Gravity got me out of my depression. But it did. For better or worse my mind’s patterns had become the same as the refrains of Switchfoot songs. When they were joyful, I was joyful. Where they despaired, I despaired. Oh! Gravity got me out of a long funk.

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Tell me tomorrow has come with open arms, open arms, open arms. If you say it’s time to move on then I’ll stop holding on, holding on. If you say that it’s time for moving on

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If you ask me about my time in Austria, I usually don’t say much about it. It’s far too painful. Yes, I fell in love and got my heart broken. But those three months were three of the freest and happiest of my life. I opened up my heart and lived and felt. I climbed mountains, prayed, failed at fasting, and saw lots of Europe. It was as if the chains of expectation and drudgery that had held me down my whole life were suddenly lifted. There opened up a bright and wide horizon. When I left, that moment in my life ended forever.

I wish I could get back what I had there. That joy and simplicity and happiness to wake up every day. I haven’t been happy to wake up in years. Still, at the time my music was mournful. I had the behind-the-scenes, hinted-at God of “Stars” but didn’t yet have the God of “Your Love is Strong.” But it was a period of becoming. I wish I could go back and recapture whatever it was out there.

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I am the second man now…and you’re raising the dead in me

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The reason I want to do more than meet and greet Switchfoot is because I still don’t understand “The Shadow Proves the Sunshine.” I would dearly love to sit down with Jon Foreman and tell him all the things written here and more. I wish I had a week to hang out with him, talk theology and music and The Chronicles of Narnia. One day if I get to be a pastor I dream of having the whole band play at a service, with me getting to play guitar while Jon sings. Of course, I need to learn guitar before that will happen.

The other day I found a sermon preached by Jon and Tim’s dad online. He preached from Matthew about the paralyzed man. This guy’s friends rip the roof of a house off and lower him straight down in front of Jesus because they want to get him there so bad. Jesus looks at him and says, “Take heart little one, your sins are forgiven.” Pastor Foreman said that the basic psychological need of human beings, deeper than any physical or emotional need, is to know that we are forgiven.

Whenever I feel depressed or down I think of Jesus saying that to me. Him, so glad and strong, the ruler of the universe just smiling down at me with old, kind eyes. “Take heart son,” he says, “Your sins are forgiven.” And I cry.