I’ve struggled to consider myself a Christian artist.
In college, I wrote music and sang at open mic nights around town. Most of my songs were about the men I had been dating. I was a thorn to my roommates, staying up late most nights strumming away my bruised ego and broken heart. When I began to host my college campus’s open mic night, a had a small group of fans who shout out their favorites for me to play. “Where did all the gentlemen go”, (not to be confused with “Where did all the cowboys go”) someone would yell from the back and I would gladly comply knowing each note inched me closer to wholeness.
At the time, I was also active in my local church singing worship music on Sunday mornings. I loved worship music and couldn’t get enough of it. My sister was the one who initially introduced me to the world of worship music. She was constantly sharing her favorite songs while I was discovering my own; a compilation of our hearts reaching out to God. I would also share my original songs with her, and she would swoon, and encourage me to write more. Our shared love for music, worship and secular, healed many years of distance and strife between us. I loved the process of writing and finding just the right melody. It was downright therapeutic yet when I tried to write a song about God, I couldn’t do it.
But men, breakups, and betrayal?
Those words came like a flood.
I became quite proficient at pushing aside my guilt about not writing songs about Jesus. On Sundays and blaring worship music in my car, were my attempts to make up for what I seemingly lacked. My heart was drawn as much to Joni Mitchell as it was to Hillsong. But the guilt grew as I began to wrestle with my lack of Christian creativity and sense of purpose with my music. So I chose what seemed best and watched my creative spirit slowly shrink down to fit the size of short pithy verses and repeated stanzas each week.
As much as I knew in my gut there wasn’t a hard line between sacred and secular, one can’t walk away from a conservative evangelical culture without the hardwiring being laid. I still threw out my Nirvana CDs for Michael W. Smith and immersed myself as a young Christian into all things Christian. I consumed it all, stuffing myself full of Jesus-y things hopeful this would help my creative blocks but when I tried to create art of any kind, Christian isn’t what came out.
Did I not love God enough?
Was a plaguing question.
So I stopped writing altogether because if I couldn’t make it holy then what was the point? Christian worship Jonah-swallowed my writing whole and spit me out onto the shores of a more “holy” mission. I began leading worship more often, then to Bible College where I majored in Music Leadership along with a degree in Bible and Theology.
Lore Wilbert recently wrote on her Substack her lack of desire to be known as a Christian-living author, despite her last two books being categorized as such. She simply states that she doesn’t want to be a maker of books for a certain consumer but to be formed by whatever writing comes, whether it be Christian or not. I find this most encouraging with my own struggle to fit into the world of Christian culture.
I picked up writing again in 2012 but it wasn’t music, it was just plain writing. First, I started with a private blog. Stopped for a year. Started another blog, public but was quiet about it. Stopped for a few years. Started yet another blog. Then that blog turned into another blog, then another, and soon the words continued to come, leading me to what you are now reading. I eventually found my voice again but it was a decade of the same struggle. I wrote about life, pain, and chasing your dreams with ease but when I tried to write about God…well, the words got stuck somewhere between my fear of writing fluff and not feeling smart enough.
This may come as a surprise because I write a lot these days about faith resiliency. Yet I must admit it hasn’t been primarily “Christianity” that has kept me faithful to my beliefs. How radically strange is that!? Christianity doesn’t necessarily create and keep people Christian!? For me, it has been many things that have helped me remain faithful to my walk with Jesus. Resiliency for me has been gained through counseling, genuine community, reading Brene Brown, creativity, self-care, quitting jobs that suck, and getting 8 hours of sleep a night. But more than anything it has been
finding the courage to say what is real.
To write and sing about the shit of life that has us scraping the very bottom of being alive. Taking what is in our hands with all the complexities and pain, looking God in the face, and asking “What am I supposed to do with this?”.
That is holy ground.
I’m not entirely sure where the pressure came to Christianize everything, even more so the creative arts, but for me, it eventually led to burnout. Today, I can barely listen to Christian music, especially worship. Perhaps this will pass but for now, it’s a trigger created over years of denying the way my art wanted to speak.
Where did the tendency come from that we must cram our whole lives through a Christian filter? What if our greatest connection to God is our grief and brokenness? What if we find some of our strongest spiritual connections outside of the Christian tradition? *Gasp* And what if filtering it actually diminishes our connection to God?
I can’t tell you how many stories I have heard from Christians leaving the faith because they have been forced to experience their faith by sucking it through a tiny-ass straw. The King of God is SO MUCH BIGGER. It’s a never-ending table of nourishment and belonging, and yet we are the ones handing out straws! Lord have mercy.
Charlotte Dolan, the founder of Spiritual Directors for Writers coined the phrase:
All of life is the writing life.
I love this phrase. It has helped me understand my writing doesn’t stop when I close my laptop. But this also applies to our spiritual lives. I am so tired of the Christian boxes I’ve lived in most of my life, and so I say:
All of life is the spiritual life
and not just the things that tote the Christian label. Here’s even something Jesus-y that comes out of this. When Jesus was suffering in the garden before his arrest, all he could pray is: Take my pain away and let Your will be done. Both acknowledge reality as it was. Nothing fancy or spiritual. Just the hard and very present moment of suffering.
Our moments of grief and suffering are the holiest of moments, and to slap on a Christianese label is to desecrate the sanctity of our scraping-bottom alters.
The moments we discover something true about ourselves in counseling or through reading non-Christian books or gazing up at a full moon are sacred, inching us closer to wholeness.
Can we not trust that Divine Love is always being revealed to us? Through us, in us, and with us? Through them, in that, with all? Imminent and transcendent? Mysterious and known?! Doesn’t fit so nicely through a straw, does it?
Here’s the thing I’ve come to accept. The world doesn’t need another pithy Christian artist. It needs artists to say what we’re all thinking out loud. Because if all of life is truly the spiritual life, then the most spiritual thing we can do is to speak what is the most true of ourselves. This is the very act of confession and lament, and much of what we actually read in the scriptures.
My music days may be long gone but I can honor my insides by letting whatever needs to come out, come out without guilt or pressure to make it something it is not. That’s why this newsletter is called Courage & Candor. Not because it’s some clever expression but because I’m committed to saying what is true for me out loud. It won’t always be spiritual or uplifting, but it will be real and honest because my best writing will always come from my most real writing.
Love this. I’m so grateful for the things that have broken us out of our boxes and knocked the straws out of our hands. 😘
Oh the guts and grace it's takes to see ourselves truly. What mercy it is that Jesus loves us velveteen rabbits.
So relatable colette! Also, your alto voice is still one of my favorites ❤️