30 Days of Truth: Day 9

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Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.

Rich Mullins.

He was already dead when I started listening to his stuff back in the late 90s. I could go into the whole story about his death, but just suffice it to say there was a trip to some benefit concert without seat belts and a flipped over Jeep. My interest in his music didn’t begin because of the tragedy, however. That was just coincidence. I listened to a lot of Christian music back then, but it was a while before I got around to him.

The first time I heard him, I remember thinking his voice wasn’t all that appealing. As a sheltered youth group kind of girl, most of his lyrics were a little out of my league too. But the older I got, the more I understood, and the more I began to identify with the substance of his music. The difference in his voice might have been honesty. Or conviction.

Jacob he loved Rachel and Rachel she loved him
And Leah was just there for dramatic effect
Well it’s right there in the Bible so it must not be a sin
But it sure does seem like an awful dirty trick

He sometimes sang about growing up “Indiana.” And boy do I get that, having lived here my whole life. The little pictures he painted were pictures I lived. My Dad didn’t farm, and my Mom didn’t make cornbread and beans—but that wasn’t really the point.

Talk about your miracles
Talk about your faith
My dad he could make things grow
Out of Indiana clay
Mom could make a gourmet meal
Out of just cornbread and beans
And they worked to give faith hands and feet
And somehow gave it wings

During my Blue Period, I remember listening to the song “My Deliverer” a lot. (Here’s how Mitch McVicker sings it.) Something in my body chemistry changed when I listened to that song. It dispelled the hurt, disappointment, and anger, which—considering my life circumstances at the time—I found to be nothing short of a miracle.

Anyway, the years 2006-2009 were huge. Paradigm shift ensued.

I wasn’t trying to let go.  And Rich might not have been the thing that drifted.

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