Ten Years With Christine

The first time I came to Anderson University I was 27 I think. I was a new dad on tour with Bebo Norman and Katy Hudson Perry. I wore girl jeans and struggled to remember the words to my new song “Welcome Home.”

I’m not 27 anymore, I’ve got three kids now, Bebo’s married, Katy kisses girls, the girl jeans have been replaced by looser fitting fair trade organic cotton, and I’ve sung that song so many times for so many years that, well…

Well, college students come up to me now and say things like, “I remember listening to that in the minivan on the way to elementary school.”

Elementary school!

That’s all I have to say about that. I’ll save the rest of my feeling-old rant for the therapist.

Speaking of therapy, I was interviewed by Christine Hoover yesterday by phone, formerly known as Christine Flemming, the girl I took to prom back in 1992, when today’s college students were being conceived – not at my prom, but somewhere else entirely.

Anyway, it’s been a long time since Christine and I talked and it turns out she’s a freelance journalist now – as well as a church planter and mom of three.

Christine asked me stuff I never get asked. She wanted to know about why I made music back in those Bebo and Katy days. And what happened between then and going independent a few years back. And why I make music today.

Unlike other interviewers, she asked not only what I’ve done but why I’ve done it. “What was your purpose?” she kept asking. It was truly therapeutic to think through her tough questions, the continuing relentless evolution of my purpose, and retrace the circuitous path God’s led my family and I down over the last few years.

I hadn’t thought the last ten years of my life over so thoroughly before. It was incredible to see all at once how much has changed not only in my career but in every area of my life – and my heart. Little by little. So slowly that I didn’t even notice some of he change had occurred until Christine asked a well-placed question or twelve.

She listened well, talked with passion about people in need and her family. Still as compassionate and kind and easy to be with as I remember her being way back when. Still loving the things God loves. Some things, thankfully, don’t change with time.