Dressember: What I Learned

Late November 30th, I (Jenna) decided to stop hemming and hawing and jump dress-first into Dressember.  I heard about it through fellow husband-wife-duo Jenny & Tyler's newsletter, and I joined Jenny's team goal of trying to raise $4500 to fund an International Justice Mission rescue mission. 

From the team Dressember page:
"IJM is a human rights organization that works to combat human trafficking and modern day slavery, and basically stands up for the rights of those who cannot stand up for themselves. They are a group of lawyers, investigators, and social workers. They go into situations to investigate and gather evidence, rescue victims, provide aftercare for the formerly enslaved, and prosecute offenders.  IJM is making real change. They work with local police and governments with the intention of fixing broken justice systems. They ensure that the law protects the most vulnerable." 

 
I am NOT ABOUT being cold.  Truly.  I don absurd amounts of layers at the mere thought of going outside below 50 degrees.  But, I do own dresses... a lot of them... and it seemed like something good to focus on this December besides the 'typical' holiday rush (which I despise. but that's another blog post.).  Now that the 31 days are complete, here are my reflections, in no particular order:

-It's not as cold as I think, usually.  This might seem silly.  But I really do fear being cold, and there were only a few days this month that I felt any real pain from wearing tights out in the elements.  I can stand to toughen up a bit, I think.  
 
-Forced discipline is good for me.  This was a willing endeavor, of course, but I was 'forced' to continue because of the public aspect.  People would see me at work and out and about each day, so if I wasn't wearing a dress, it would be quickly evident.  On the rare occasion I wouldn't be in planned direct contact with others, I was still posting a photo on Instagram every day, so I still needed to get into a dress.  Self-discipline is something I struggle with, and the accountability that came with this made me actually follow through.  (Unlike the Advent calendar I made a couple of years ago that I try to force us to get through each year... but again, another blog post.....)

-People are generous.  This was a reminder; I have learned this already in incredible ways (namely, making our last album!).  It is intimidating to campaign for a financial cause in December, when a) people need to buy gifts and b) seemingly every non-profit organization is trying to raise money to meet their year-end budgets.  A goal of $300 seemed a bit lofty, and I really didn't know what would happen... but it was met and surpassed by Day 17.  I'm so grateful for the women who got behind this cause to give other people a chance at life and freedom!

-Let nothing be taken for granted.  Each day that I posted a picture of the dress I was wearing, I intentionally tried to shed light on the issue of human trafficking with my description.  And I found that I could relate almost everything about my life to this.  If I had food to eat, chose what I wore, had a bed to sleep in, worked a vocation of my choosing, had access to technology, used my educated mind, saw my husband... all of it was suddenly precious and no longer a given.  And this was not the passive realization of counting my blessings and sitting on my haunches - it came in such a way that moved me to do something about those who do not have these basic human rights because they have been stolen, trafficked, sold, robbed.

 -I own an absurd amount of clothing.  Again, a reminder, nothing new.  But someone asked me in the beginning of the month if I really had enough dresses to wear for 31 days, and I said, "Oh, no way - I'll do laundry and repeat and restyle them as I go."  With 10 days to go, I counted the unworn dresses hanging in my closet (without having repeated one yet) and realized that I could surpass the 31 day mark EASILY with plenty leftover.  Yikes.  Excess is something God has been working on in me, and this was another painful reminder that I can't get comfortable feeling like I've handled it in one area of my life and ignore the others.  Most of these dresses were purchased very inexpensively (under $10) or were even hand me downs from a friend - but, let that not excuse indulgence.  It cues important communication from me, as others ask and are pleasantly impressed with my wardrobe.  This is NOT an area I am proud of, nor do I want to perpetuate the sins of wasting resources and hoarding possessions.  We cannot take one bit of them into the next life.  They are dust.  I need to tell myself this daily and loosen my attachment to them.

-This was a creative outlet.  I have grown to enjoy creativity in fashion to a small extent, and this month pushed that further.  I am no fashion magazine trendsetter, but I found I was experiencing some of the same enjoyment that I feel when I'm decorating our apartment or being crafty.  When it comes to visual arts, I can't draw or paint to create from nothing like Chris can, but I can combine existing elements in ways that please and intrigue me.  I am still processing this, but I think it is opening me to several things, including: 
1) to be able to let more clothes go. I experimented more with how to combine different wardrobe pieces and accessories, and the possibilities currently in my closet are ENDLESS.  I can pare down a considerable amount and still be able to come up with creative combinations.  Some of this is thanks to seeing Dressember pics of girls who took one dress and styled it 7 unique ways throughout the month (or even 31 different ways! Some girls, including the founder of the movement, wore the same dress all month long and looked like knockouts the whole way through).  I can do that. 
2) to toe the line between recognizing God-given joy in creativity in this arena and the dangerous slope into materialism and vanity.  The propensity for these things is very real in my life, and I need the Spirit to keep me in balance.  

 
-God can use anything for His purposes.  It's soooooo easy for us to judge those who have different interests and passions than our own, and who dedicate different aspects of their lives to God.  But I had conversations about human trafficking with my mechanic, my family, my coworkers... these would not have taken place were it not for a compliment based on whatever dress-centered outfit I wore that day.  God can use something as simple as a dress to create change and save lives.

-Social media really can foster connection.  So much of it masquerades as doing just that while really alienating us from one another as we compare, judge, comment, hate.  But as I used my #dressember hashtag each day on Instagram, I got likes from users I did not know.  Visits to their profiles often showed that they were working in many ways that align with the mission of IJM - Noonday ambassadors, independent clothing designers with integrity, fair trade boutique entrepreneurs, and so many more.  I got to see so many pieces of what the Kingdom is doing!  I also got to see creativity pour out of Dressember participants.  Some had stunning photographs capturing their dresses, some were men coming up with inventive ways to support the mission instead of wearing a dress, some were women doing surprising things in a dress, some were artists who gave voice to this movement through their craft, some found clever ways to visually work the mission into their photographs and descriptions, some were teachers like me!  And all were uniting under one cause, one umbrella to speak truth and stand for justice.  I was a part of something much bigger than me, and I got to affirm and connect with strangers I will likely never meet.

-On the flipside, full disclosure: I hate selfies.  I hate taking them of myself, I'm not really into seeing other people's, I'm not really about the whole concept.  It just feels like "HEY LOOK AT ME!" to me.  No judgement on those of you who love them, this is just my personal bent.  My exception is if someone is with me in the picture, because it's capturing a moment of interaction.  But for most of these, I only remembered to take a photo when I was alone.  For a while, I kept my face entirely out of the pictures, because I knew I'd end up taking 8 shots until I had one I sort of liked of myself.  I then found that as long as I kept my phone in front of part of my face, I wasn't too critical.  There are some of my full face, but it took a while to get there.  I promise I don't hate the way I look in real life or in a mirror.  But a month of taking selfies was starting to have the self-indulgent feeling I had correctly anticipated.  It's a vanity thing.  So, I'm relieved to be done with them for a while.  Too many minutes messing with filters and adjustments.  If I do it again, I will enlist Chris to take creative pictures that are not me in a mirror.

-How I direct compliments is crucial.  This month was a more day to day occurrence with coworkers, trying to point each "You look so cute!" back to IJM, the issues at hand, and not glorifying the mountains of dresses I own.  This is a big thing when we're on stage, too - wearing a fun outfit to play a show definitely helps me get in the zone of confidence and creativity.  But if all people (especially young women) walk away with is an impression of cute clothes or 'style,' I have failed the mission of why we make music.  The answer is NOT to refute them, because that dishonors the giver; it's simply trying to channel the glory to the One who deserves it.  It's a delicate dance.  I'm trying not to step on toes.

-They say it takes 21 days to break a habit.  I felt this in terms of desire for pants, especially jeans.  Jeans are pretty much my go-to, but after so long of not wearing them, I stopped missing them.  I attribute much of this to leggings being in style.  If tights were my only option for warmth, I might not have gotten so used to it.  But with it being the holiday season and endless food abounding, leggings were really much friendlier to my expanding waistline than jeans would have been (are), anyway.  I've worn jeans these first 3 days of January, but I changed back out of them last night because leggings would not dig into my leftover-eating hips.  I also welcome legwarmers back to the world.  I missed you, legwarmers, though I was too young to get the hang of you back in the '80s.

-You don't realize the value of what you have until you really use it (or don't).  Obvious, but true.  I often have lusted after cute outfits and clothing pieces and accessories as I see them in advertising, in stores, on people I deem cooler than myself, anywhere.  I have a bit of an insatiable thirst when it comes to this.  I always elevate whatever new thing I'm looking at above everything I already own.  I didn't just throw a dress on each day this month; I put thought into every outfit and created more detailed looks than I do many days, almost like I was dressing for a show every day (NOTE: this does NOT mean the goal was/is to impress others; I was finding creative pleasure in this and feeling confident in these choices.  I make this distinction more for me than for you, to check my own motives.).  And I realized that I really do have so many pieces that could create an endless combination of looks that I really like.  This cured some of my fashion lust.  So much so that, for Christmas, Chris gifted me with the promise of a trip to Francesca's where he will pick out something for me, something I'd long proclaimed would make me happy as a clam.  And it does still make me happy, but I will need a while before I feel like I want or need this to happen - I'm almost 'cute'-ed out.  I did not think this was possible.  (He gave me an expiration date of March 31, so I've got a couple months to get over it!)

-Maybe THIS is real Christmas.  Jesus came to the world poor and homeless.  His people were in bondage to sin and could not free themselves.  And he spoke freedom for the captives, hope for the hopeless, all from a posture of humility and earthly weakness.  When we truly see the slave, the widow, the orphan in distress, we see Jesus.  When we begin to feel the weight of their pain, we feel the weight of the duplicity of Advent - the longing of the Israelites for so, so long for a Savior, and the groaning of creation now for Him to come back again and make all things right in the face of slavery, abduction, injustice, fear.  With each life we free, we are saying "YES, Jesus.  Welcome."  We are reordering creation in the smallest of pieces.  Each post from IJM about a new rescue gives me "a thrill of hope / the weary world rejoices."  This is why we have Christmas at all, and this is the working out of our daily Advent.

Thanks to those of you who followed along on Instagram.  There is still time to donate to the final total - the overall goal is $500k, and we are almost there.  It was an adventure, and above all else, I pray for hope, freedom, and restoration for all!!

My personal fundraising page: https://support.dressemberfoundation.org/fundraise?fcid=382369

 

Come to Me.

I (Jenna) am keeping this one relatively short.  This is a feat where my verbose writing mind is concerned.  But it is important this time.  I am simultaneously inspired to write and to heed the words laid upon my heart.

We are preparing for a conference this weekend - we're returning to lead worship for a group of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship students in the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania.  Just the two of us, no extra musicians along for the jam this time.  And it will be so good when we get there.  The week leading up to such things, though, is always a looming mountain to me.  I look upon each hour as a fractional piece, placing expectations upon us of practice in every spare moment to try to get even remotely close to the whole of "Prepared," because that is what we should always be and never are and we are SO behind and when will it happen if not now and how can we be professionals and what is wrong with us.

This inner monologue guilt trip is never once what God has said to me.  But heavens, I've recited it over and over again maniacally and tried to beat Chris over the head with it, too, in moments of desperation.  I will let you take about two seconds to surmise how effective this is.

So tonight, we cackled through the downhill spiral of Once Upon a Time over Mexican pie (unrelated: new obsession = savory pie), wrote to this precious face (the Compassion child we sponsor), watched the new Avengers movie trailer (and after he sopped up his drool, Chris explained all of it to me so I can pretend I know what's going on and be just as pumped), and at last sat down to practice.

I mean, LOOK AT HIM.  His future hopes include

becoming an evangelist and meeting us. *dies*

And as we sat down, Chris said, "Is it too late to add another song?"

I stared silently back and willed the giant YES back down and the eye-daggers back into their sheaths.  In my head, I looked quite receptive.  I won't ask him, just in case.

He said he just felt like it was a really appropriate response song, and it would be simple, and we didn't have to, but it was really poignant and maybe we could try it?  "Okay.  Try it."  Which translates to "Of course, my dearest love," and not "Sure. Go. I dare you," if you were wondering.

So then he sat down at the piano and played and sang the song.  

Come to me

Walk with me

Learn the rhythms of my grace

And I thought, well, maybe, harumph, okay.

Come to me

I have all you need

Learn to rest even while you are awake 

And then we pulled it up on Bandcamp to listen through to get it correct. 

Are you tired?

Are you worried?

Worn out from the day?

Have you been in a hurry?

I will slow the pace.

Hmm.  Umm.  Well.  Let's try it.  Key of Bb.  Jenna sings.

Come to-

And I was done.

I could sing no more words.

In a child's lullaby, the Voice of ages cut through my noise.
The floodgate was shattered.

One tear turned to three.

A trickle down my cheek turned to a river.

And I was small.  frail.  present.  listening.  

And He was Great.  Strong.  Present.  Speaking.

Come to me.  Come to me.  Come to me.

"Yeah, me too," said Chris.

Here I am.

And there I go.

The end.

Lyrics from "Come to Me" featuring Sandra McCracken from the Rain for Roots project album The Kingdom of Heaven is Like This. listen and purchase.  it will be worth it.

Mess.

Here's a little insight to my [Jenna's] past month or so.

I am now 30.  And with that has come an ever-increasing desire to live well.  In the physical realm, this looks like integrating main ideas of healthy eating into our grocery shopping and diet.  Like starting to run (read: jog/power walk/wheeze) in the mornings before work.  Like gradually exchanging chemical products in our home for natural solutions.  Like learning cleaning techniques our mothers and grandmothers knew like the backs of their hands, but for some reason didn't quite bridge the generation gap.  Like trying to get a handle on a schedule of keeping our apartment less of a wreck despite our crazy days.

This is a great image to illustrate my recent cleaning efforts, and also how I look and feel never.

The more I am trying to do these things, the more I am foiled in my efforts.  Shocking, right?

Specifically, I'm looking at you, cleanliness.  In the past couple of weeks, we have:

• knocked an entire container of bright yellow mustard barbecue sauce onto the carpet
• kicked a full glass of red wine over onto the carpet (beside the mustard stain)
• gotten home to discover a gallon of milk leaked into the backseat of my car (a mere week after DIY-shampooing the seats, because Pinterest! and cleanliness!)
• discovered the health benefits of turmeric and its part in creating delicious Indian-style food like lamb sloppy joes... as well as its apparent dying properties of counters, clothes, and anything ever
• had coconut oil-laden bulletproof coffee (healthy! let's do it!) leak into the depths of our Magic Bullet and all over the counter (incidentally, when you google 'hot liquid in M.B.,' disregard the half of people who say they've been doing it for years and heed the other half who say the pressure will make it shoot through the blade)
• discovered my old sneakers are now tracking black footprints everywhere, notably on freshly mopped floors
• and probably at least 29 other things.

 Thank you, universe.  Thank you, klutziness.  Thank you, thank you, irony.  (This would be my current version of that Alanis Morisette song.  Which, really, I could just say 'that Alanis song.'  Because who else is named that?!  I digress.)

And it INFURIATES ME.  To NO END.

 
It feels like such a waste of time.  I could be doing Big Things and Important Things and instead I am locked into a distasteful thing I hate for the next 25 minutes as I blot, scrub, press, shake. 

In a fit of rage and drama normalcy, I finally cried out, "I am DONE.  Get rid of it.  All of it.  Hire a dumpster.  Have a yard sale.  I don't care.  I am done owning things if all I am going to do is spend my time trying to fix them.  I don't want to own anything anymore."

Chris basically did a bell-kick in the air and gleefully asked when we can buy the RV and hit the road.

This would be fun for .4 days for me. 
Chris would be happy as a pup with two tails for life.

We have not sold all the things yet.  But truly, I have struggled.  I am attempting to become more responsible and care for what God has given us.  And it just feels like it keeps blowing up in my face.  I have not understood it.  And my frustration has grown.

And now, finally tonight, God has spoken.

I was at a prayer gathering - part of IF : Pray - and women were offering up sweet, honest prayers of hope, confession, desperation, life.  And one woman uttered, "I need You every moment, Lord.  Your mercies are new every morning because I need them."

And I heard: "This is why."

Clarity.  Undone. 

"Abide.  Need me.  Come to me."

Do I need God to get a stain out of a rug?  Well, working in my own strength sure isn't working out great, for me or for Chris.  Some of the messes have been cleaned up (praise the Lord - the spoiled-milk-dead-animal-soul-sucking-dementor smell in the car lingered for a good week, and I was getting ready to hitchhike to work); others stubbornly remain and I'm still fighting them.  I sourly, bitterly, selfishly fight.  Maybe the stain lifts, maybe it doesn't, but my mood is terrible and Chris wants to be nowhere near me.  I am anything but lovely.

Each new spill and drop and waste is an opportunity to lean on God.  Each is a tiny picture of the Mess I create in my life when I try to do it apart from Him.  That as I try to wrestle for control of my days, the Mess just gets bigger.  That as I push and scrub harder and harder through my gritted teeth, I grind the stains of my life in deeper and deeper and solidify the evidence of my mistakes and my foolishness.  But oh, how I try.

"I know You are there, catching, carrying this beautiful mess." - Sixpence NTR

So.  Deep breath.

When the next thing spills, I will pause and breathe and thank God for his presence and his reminder that I. need. Him.  I need him every hour.  Every moment.  Every second.  That trying to do life without him is futile and just messier and messier.  I was a Mess before he got a hold of me, and I revert to Mess each time I act in my own strength and not his.

I need You, God.  Thanks for putting me - literally - on my hands and knees.  This was an unusual lesson for me.  But I got it, eventually.  I need You.

"I need Thee, oh I need Thee, every hour I need Thee."

We Have Begun.

The album has, in most senses of the word, begun.

We released Waiting to Begin on May 20, 2014.  That day, we saw it appear on iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, and all other online music sites.  People were posting it, tweeting it, giving feedback.  People sent cards and flowers.  People said "Congratulations!" all day.

And most times, I had to think for a moment why they were congratulating us before it sunk in.  I wondered why there were flowers on my desk when I got to work.  I truly wasn't sure what they were talking about for a good 10 seconds each time.

And then it would hit me - oh.  Our album is out in the world today.  So am I told.  Is that real, though??!

I think about 35% of those blank stares were because it hadn't hit me yet - each time someone asked how it felt, I answered, "Surreal."  I think the other 65% of those looks were because we were planning for the release show, happening a mere 10 days after the digital release.  A release date can be a huge deal, but when your eyes are locked on the next thing, it can slip by almost unnoticed.

Anne Lamott has a very humorous, very true narrative about the publication date of a new book in Bird by Bird.  This is the only book of hers I've had the pleasure of reading, but I adore her style - she voices all the crass humor and self-maddening lines inside my head, assuring me I'm not the only crazy person out there.  Her experience was a bit opposite of mine, for which I owe her and several wise, warning musician friends a debt of gratitude.  

"There is something mythic about the date of publication, and you actually come to believe that on this one particular morning you will wake up to a phone ringing off the hook and your publisher will be so excited that they will have hired the Blue Angels precision flying team to buzz your squalid little hovel, which you will be moving out of as soon as sales of the book really take off.

...I remember one year my friend Carpenter and I had books out on the same day.  We talked about it all summer.  We each pretended to have modest expectations...  The week before, we talked almost every morning about how excited we were and what a long time we had waited, and how it was just like being a a little kid waiting for Christmas Eve.  Finally the big day arrived and I woke up happy, embarrassed in advance by all the praise and attention that would be forthcoming.  I made coffee and practiced digging my toe in the dirt... Then I waited for the phone to ring.  The phone did not know its part.  It sat there silent as death with a head cold.  By noon the noise of it not ringing began to wear badly on my nerves.  Luckily, though, by noon it was time for the first beer of the day.  I sat by the phone like a loyal dog, waiting for it to ring.  Finally, finally it rang at four.  I picked up the phone and heard Carpenter laughing hysterically, like some serial killer, and then I became hysterical, and eventually we had to be sedated.

...This is often pretty much what it is like... I tell you, if what you have in mind is fame and fortune, publication is going to drive you crazy." - Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

Truly, Anne, as well as Jeremy from Willet, thank you.  Your anecdotes and cautionary tales saved me from being a curled up, hysterically laughing centipede on the living room rug.  Expectations are everything.

From this, I take two big things.

1) "If what you have in mind is fame and fortune, publication is going to drive you crazy."  Chris has been very purposeful about the definition of success for Chris & Jenna.  We have seen too many musician friends focused on the idea of "making it," whatever that means, and dried themselves up in the process of attaining something they'd never truly defined or fleshed out for themselves.  Chris & Jenna's success is not based on gaining nationwide radio play.  It is not on becoming famous.  It is not on being affirmed that our music is good.  There are many goals like this that are not wrong to pursue; they are simply not ours at the moment.  Right now, success for us means that someone hears a message of hope in a lyric and is changed.  And that is happening.  And we are humbled to the core by it.  This, in part, is why our release day did not come with as much pressure as it might have.  We made art, we wanted to share it with the hope of speaking truth to people, and we did.  Therefore, it was a successful release.

2) When we are so focused on the next big thing, it is all too easy to miss the joy of what is happening now.  The release show was by far the biggest musical undertaking we have done, and it showed.  We were overwhelmed, we made a hundred mistakes and omissions in the planning process, we spent every moment between our day jobs and sleep on it.  So when the digital release of the album came, we were in a bit of a fog of preparation for a real live show.  Thus my incoherence and incomprehensible responses to folks' "Congrats!!"  Thank heaven for these excited people - otherwise, the whole day might have slipped by unnoticed.  With the weight of two years work on my shoulders, I think they really were more excited than I was in the moment. 

Let it be known that it all sunk in the night and day after the release show, and it was a beautiful, cathartic weekend.  All of the emotion and energy came rushing out, and we felt loved and blessed beyond measure.  It is not always this way when a creative project is unveiled, and we do not take it lightly.  Thank you to each and every person who came on board and made it so special for us.

So, the record has begun.  Keyword: begun, not finished.  We knew, and were reinforced by other musicians, that if we completely spent ourselves in the process of release, we would have nothing left to propel forward.  We did not make this album for 1,000 copies of it to sit in our spare bedroom.  We made it to share it with the world and impact people's lives.  The release of it is a beginning, a launch, to go and do that.

We've had our rest.  We have taken band work days and spent them guilt-free eating food and laying on the couch.  We have watched more episodes of Parenthood than I care to admit.  (I lied.  I'll admit every one of them.  I want to live in Berkeley with them, where everything is hilarious and achingly beautiful.)  Now, it is time to get back in the driver's (and passenger's) seats and move forward with what we've made, so it can fulfill its purpose and the definitions of success we set.  They may change.  We want to hold them loosely and prayerfully at all times.  But having clear definitions of what success is and being present in it are both preciously crucial.  To our music, to our mission, and to our very lives.

-Jenna

The Eye of the Storm.

All the feelings.  I (Jenna) don't know where to start.

Today, I got home from work to find two giant cardboard boxes sitting, soaking wet, in the pouring rain.  What did they hold?  Only 1,000 precious little CD babies of our new album.  After lugging them inside and facing the immediate dilemma of "I need to get these out of the cardboard mush ASAP before moisture gets into the CD packagings" and "Chris is not home.  I cannot open these album boxes without him.  That would be wrong..." I compromised by putting them up on their sides, opening the soggy tops & bottoms, and clawing a few smaller box corners open to let air in.  Or something.

 (Chris then got home.  And we opened them.  They look ok.  The peasants rejoiced.)

First order of business?  Open one up and start playing it, because something could have happened to the master we sent and the songs could be in the wrong order or there could be terrible sounds or something could cut off too soon.  (No, I don't have anxiety or trust issues. Obvi.)

(P.S.  The CDs work just fine.  Praise the Lord.)

So, as we started to take on other tasks while keeping an ear in the background to make sure Track 5 is indeed Track 5, I hopped on Facebook, like any good inefficient user of time.  Scrolling through the newsfeed (I gave that up for Lent this year.  I'm allowed to look now.  Often, it doesn't bring me enough joy to warrant how much I do it.  Go figure.), I saw this blogpost that a friend shared.  It has been raining for days, and flooding is starting to plague our area.  This is moments after seeing news reports of the wave of tornadoes that hit the south.  Truthfully, I haven't read much about it to this point.  I've maybe been slightly distracted by other things.

But I read this post.  The writer tells of being near the tornadoes, how the giant EF5 tornado hit the street they had just moved away from, and how her dear friend had just moved TO that area.  She writes about their frantic search for their friends and their children.  I will not do the author injustice by badly summarizing the ending and aftermath of their search.  But it talks of both incredible anger at God at loss of life and His apparent "plans," and of incredible faith that is not shaken even by the deepest grief - indeed, what is likely my greatest, deep-seated fear.

As I journeyed through those words, our album got to the song "Night."  It is a song about desperately trying to cling to hope when everything seems dark.  The chorus sings:

"Promise when all is said and done You'll be true
And that You're gonna make all things new."

My eyes did not stay dry.  This world is broken.  This is NOT how things were meant to be - homes being wiped clean from their foundations, children being taken, losing everything we hold dear.  Can everything really be made new??

...That's just it, isn't it?  It depends what we hold dear.  If it is things on this earth, then yes, we can lose everything.  But if it is something Deeper, something Greater, than it is impossible to lose everything.

The next song continued, "Far Beyond."  It was like I was hearing it with fresh ears, someone who hadn't played a part in its creation but just an earnest listener.

"Two things that I trust you will restore - 
The world, and my ever-broken heart;
knowing that I'll count them all the more
Beautiful for having once been torn apart."

The tears continued.  Is it really possible that one day this earth will be fully redeemed?  That in its radiance, every tear and woe from this life will make the new life that much more glorious?  Sometimes it seems too much to dare to hope... and then, at the same time, it seems too much NOT to trust it.  The pain we feel here is not the end of the story.  It is not meaningless.

I am grateful.  Grateful for an album that is complete and sitting here in our living room.  Grateful that as lightning crashes outside and rain pelts our walls, we are dry inside them.  Grateful that this album is not merely a business or a marketing venture - it is timid, firm Hope, in song form.  Grateful that technology can be used to help us rally around those who are despairing and struck down, however far away they might be.  And grateful for the sobering reminder that every last bit of our life could blow away tonight, yet we would still have more than we ever could have imagined for ourselves.

Again, the blogpost about The Cheerleader (the faithful) is here.  
And you can support the surviving family here.

-Jenna

2013 - The Final Moments

We have arrived.

On our first Tuesday work day of January 2013, we went to an Indian/Mexican combo restaurant (weird, right?) in our town with a notebook and pen to set some goals for the year.  Included in our conversation was an attempt at a timeline for our then-imaginary album.  It looked like this:

It felt like we'd already made progress, and made the "How on earth do we do this again?!" feeling shrink for a day or three. 

That day feels like it happened in another era.  Two dreamers, eager to be a "real" band, embarking on a voyage on a very misty morning, where all we could see were a few feet of waves in front of the dock and no hint of land on the other side.  And here we are, a year later, with so many miles sailed that the shore we left is but a memory now.

Realistically, our time frame got adjusted several times, which was to be expected.  The April scratches (= a basic version of the song everyone can listen to while they record their actual parts on the song in the studio) became more like demo versions, trying to pass ideas around friends and colleagues to embody the little souls in each song.  We played our last C&J shows in May/June so we could buckle down and focus on the record.  Summer saw the scratches created, changed, and finished, with the help of musicians around us. 

August finally brought the beginning of the recording process itself.  First, the drummer laid down the foundations in the beginning of the month.  Then, the day we packed our ideas and clothes into the Civic and drove the 15+ hours to Port St Lucie, FL (note to selves: next time, do not go NEAR 95 south on the last Saturday of summer vacation, as everyone in the vicinity of VA will be doing the same thing to get to Virginia Beach).  We spent a week pouring every ounce of energy (and our blessed, saintly engineer's energy) into a tiny vocal booth, running into the wee hours of the morning and sustained only by the Lord, Mama Douglas's cooking (best. host. ever.), banana-peanut butter wraps, and Throat Coat tea.  Definitely mostly the Lord.  When the week was through, we hopped back in the car, drove straight through to Maryland, and woke up to our day jobs (Jenna's return to teaching from summer break!) the next morning.  We also managed to drag ourselves out to dinner to celebrate Chris's birthday that day!

Geoff (both guitarist and engineer) began work laying down guitar tracks as we worked on piano ideas.  Then, on September 10th, we got word that our dream mixing engineer had time to squeeze in a lil' ol' band like us in about a month.  Cue SUDDENLY RECORDING THE REST OF THE ALBUM ASAP.  We grabbed our bassist and our programming writer (also the drummer) and set up a makeshift studio in our church to track bass and piano parts.  As soon as we finished, we sent the tracks down to Geoff in Florida so he could get them edited and ready for mixing. 

We also realized that, if we wanted the album mixed and mastered properly like we'd been hoping, we needed to start our Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign, like, yesterday.  Chris put footage together and we launched the campaign to raise the rest of the funds we needed to make this step of the project happen.  We were able to set our goal comparably small to our entire budget, thanks to many private backers and donors who believe in this ministry and have partnered with us along the way.

At the end of October, Shane D. Wilson started work mixing our tracks.  We got the first 2 tracks two days later, went out and bought a pair of quality speakers so we could actually hear them, sat at our desk in our music work room... and listened with our mouths open, eyes shining, silent.  Until they finished, and we giggled like giddy schoolchildren.  We could not BELIEVE the quality he was bringing to our songs.  That week and the next were spent listening on as many sets of speakers as we could, taking notes, sending small requests for changes (and they were indeed few!), and listening more. 

In the process of this, we had been communicating with our mastering engineer, Matthew Odmark, since early October.  (We may have geeked out slightly when we realized he's a member of Jars of Clay.  Maybe.)  He received all of the mixed files in November so he could master the album for us... at which point he needed the name of the album and track listing.  Which we had spent approximately 15 seconds thinking about to date.  So, we spent a slightly crazed evening creating every possible mutation of an order for the 10 songs until we finally agreed that we'd found it. 

Chris works in many lists and doodles. 

Jenna works in sticky notes rearranged many ways.

Matthew mastered the album for us, we gave him a few tiny requests, and he finished it off.  Whew.

After 2 1/2 whirlwind months of much faster progress than we expected, December became a month of working on album artwork and building a new band website to help us reach more people when we release the album.  December also became a month of holiday crazy times, so progress has seemed more snail-like compared with the preceding months.

But, here we are, on the very last day of the year.  We have a tiny piece of notebook paper to look back on, where we took our best guesses at setting goals for how we could expect an album to develop.  And now, we could listen to the mastered version on a set of car speakers as we drove home on Christmas Eve, tearing up at the marvel of what has been created.  Not that we or the album itself are so wondrous - only that God can breathe His creative spirit into community and can birth something that seems impossible to two small people in northern Maryland.

We are tired.  We are proud.  We are humbled.  2013, you have been a challenging and stretching year.  We are grateful for it.  We look forward to completing the rest of the artwork, website, PR work, and distribution necessary in early 2014 to finally give this album flight, and then to plunging back into shows where we can do what we love: playing music together and hopefully ministering to people in small ways.

Blessings to you in 2014.  Could not say it better than this:

This is attributed to Brad Paisley.  But the image that had his name also had an incorrectly placed comma after the word "Tomorrow."  I will not abide such things.

Kickstart the New CHRIS & JENNA Album!

Well, everyone, here's our life right now!  We are amazed at how much support the project has drawn in such a short amount of time.  If you're down with what we're doing, spread the word to those you know - help us make this album happen!! 
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/696318513/new-chris-and-jenna-album