It was my junior year of college. I lived with three other Christian guys in an apartment somewhere north of where I sit right now. We spent many a late night over pancakes (during which we may or may not have felt like coffee), learning about how love is different than you'd think, and though none of us was expecting a postcard from anywhere, we were each ready to make a daring escape into the mistake of our lives.
We found significant consolation for the loneliness that we all felt in our inescapable fellowship and the brooding-yet-hopeful music that Derek Webb brought to us in our canon of Caedmon's Call albums. Derek, we felt in our hearts, understood us and reminded us of God's faithfulness. His lyrics, chords, and tempos taught us that it was okay to not feel okay, and that we can be okay with that.
Today, each of us is married (and, I suspect, would do so all over again), and I'm glad we learned in college to be okay with not being okay, because it's not okay to think that marriage makes everything okay. And when I need a reminder of that, I just turn my music player to my "Caedmon's Extended Call" playlist (including Caedmon's, Derek Webb solo, and The Normals).
Yesterday, Derek publicly announced his divorce, and I found myself feeling extremely sad. Perhaps it's the culmination of a heavy week semester pre-tenure run 27 years of academic progress, and this news finally prompted me to sit down and show some feels.
But also, perhaps this sadness is a sign that I still need to grow up a little.
I know I easily transition from finding comfort in music to living vicariously through it, and from identifying with music to letting it inform my identity. Maybe I still need to grow up and learn to make my own kind of music, and be okay with how it sounds.
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