How is it that everyone's evolving, but I'm just the same as I was ten years ago? Maybe twenty. It's been a while since I last visited this particular area of my hometown. I laugh at that word. Hometown. Houston is more of a vast sprawling metropolis. But it's where I'm from; I don't need to pretend I'm from somewhere quaint. This wannabe country girl is absolutely from the city.
Today I visited an area of Houston I haven't been to in years. It makes sense; I left when I was twenty and didn't really look back. Where there was once a church (albeit a huge one), there's now a giant industrial style condo. The church campus outgrew the building I remember years ago and moved down the freeway. But the old building was the first place I heard Derek sing in person.
He was part of a group then. Caedmon's Call. The darlings of the Y2K contemporary Christian music scene. Their theology? Deep. Their harmonies? On point. Their unity? Unbreakable. They asked the questions we all wrestled with in the dark, most of us not daring to speak them aloud for fear that someone somewhere might wonder if the Holy Fire inside us was genuine. But they did it for us. It was empowering. Daddy Young was an influential pastor in the city; if these kids could speak about the complexities of their faith, surely we could too.
Today, as I drove by where that church building used to be, I recalled the way I felt the first time I heard the music that would eventually break my heart. Derek wrote songs about city buses and lovely people and intense heartache. It wasn't long after this that he left his CCM supergroup to go out on his own.
Derek's music followed me to college, a solo act (though sometimes accompanied by his now ex-wife) filled with frustration and angst that resonated, but an attitude that didn't. Many times, I witnessed him snap at rooms full of college students for not paying close enough attention. I was too young and naive to realize that he wasn't a jerk. He was simply slipping away right before our eyes.
A few years later, his very public transgressions wrecked his life. And his departure from the faith wrecked mine.
Derek's music changed into something painful. He was hurting. Angry. Working from a place of depth that the church insisted was unhealthy. And we crucified him for it. Now that I'm older, I can understand where he was coming from. Even if we didn't come to the same conclusion.
I didn't listen to him for years, though his lyrics often slipped into my head, embedded in my heart forever and always causing a twinge of pain.
It wasn't that long ago that Derek released an album called The Songs that Made Me (the inspiration for this series.) And oh, I cried. I cried and cried and cried over the forgiveness I needed to offer him. Who knew that by allowing someone's art into your life, you gave them the power to both build and destroy you?
Derek and I have since reconciled in my mind. He of course is appropriately and blissfully unaware of how his struggles and transgressions affected my twenty-something year old heart. And he never will. There's no reason he and I should ever cross paths.
But now I am pursuing art. Writing stories and poems molded and shaped by my own fears and doubts and joys and beliefs. Storytelling is a vulnerable thing, placing the heart of the author into the unstable hands of the reader. It's dangerous. But oh, it's worth doing. And I don't know if I could have done it ten years ago.
As I write this, my mind returns to the condos of the corner of that street in west Houston, where everything has changed. I go back to Derek's words, claiming that everyone changes around him. And I consider the fact that we are sometimes blissfully and naively unaware of our changes as they happen.
Maybe we should pay a little more attention to that. Blessings, friends.
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The Music that Made Me is a narrative nonfiction memoir style series for the month of July to go along with #flashfictionmagic on Instagram, where you can find me at @khelmetauthor. I hope you resonate with these words, and all conversation is welcome and appreciated.
It appears we share a common ear, though I confess my response to Derek is not to seek an apology, but to punch him in the nose! Truth is, apart from curiosity, I keep his music from the last decade at arms length, out of a blend of holy fear, and self protection. I see in it a seduction. There are too many forces warring against my orthodox soul, and I sometimes feel the siren call. So I avoid this more obvious source of contention.