What It’s Like to Be Me: Begin Again Pt 2, Contemplation

If divorce was the lowest point in my life, everything that followed would be an uphill climb. The emphasis here is with the word climb. While my health and happiness improved, it wasn’t an instant or easy transition. It involved a lot of contemplation and introspection. For a while, the only prayer I could manage to pray was “help this all make sense.” So I prayed it over and over until things started making sense.

Before I could become who I am now, I had to rediscover who I was. There was deconstruction and reconstruction. I argued with myself. I argued with God. If I were to build a better me, I had to uproot my flaws and admit my failures. These songs helped me find ways to express my weakest parts.

Wideawake: “Greener”
Scott Leger opens this song with a common adage: “They say the grass is greener on the other side.” We all fight against comparison to some extent, and Scott described his battle in the second verse. “I struggle to make progress, it's a never ending fight.” He also says he has “doubts to fill the sky” and “an ocean full of failure.” I can relate.

Showbread: “Age of Insects”
Walking back into church as a recent divorcee and newly minted single dad forced me to confront the weight of my mistakes. I often felt small, like a bug walking around “on insect legs beneath an unforgiving sun.” Thankfully, I was surrounded by a community filled with grace. They gave me the freedom to rediscover God and overcome my insecurities. This song brought me full circle, beginning with my circumstance at the time. “Thought you wouldn't recognize me in the black of soot and ash, Don't turn deaf unto my voice, there's one thing I want you to know: I have always loved you, though my life has never said so.” Then it returned me to my first love. It closes with a chorus we sang at church when I was a kid, “I love you Lord and I lift my voice to worship you, oh my soul rejoice, Take joy my King in what you hear, may it be a sweet sweet song in your ear.”

Heath McNease: “'Til We Have Faces”
Disclaimer. I don’t like Heath McNease. Because of things I know about him, I don’t want to promote him or his work. I’ve unfollowed all of his social media outlets and deleted any music I’d previously purchased of his. All except this one song. I can’t escape it. Even though I struggle to separate who his is with the art he creates, there’s something about these words that haunted me. “Dead and buried, no respects, and no one cares, none there accept me. I haven't done enough for love, How could love accept me?” Before I could rebuild myself, I had to recognize the self loathing I allowed to take over my identity and embrace the loneliness of divorce as a gift that brought me closer to God. “It's cold and snowy nights that slowly fade from lonely days, but it's worth these frozen veins to see a perfect face. So dig the words right out of us 'til this cage of fragile ribs protecting us is shattered, gladly ground it back to dust.”

Listener: “Wooden Heart (Sea of Mist Called Skaidan)”
The person who introduced me to this song described it as a song about grace – something I was in desperate need of at the time. This raw need for grace is laid bare in some of the most beautiful prose I’ve ever heard, “I am the barely-living son of a woman and man who barely made it, but we’re making it taped together on borrowed crutches and new starts, we all have the same holes in our hearts.” This is a song I keep coming back to every time I feel like I’m not good enough. It has made such a huge impact on my life especially the line, “This war-ship is sinking, and I still believe in anchors. Pulling fist fulls of rotten wood from my heart, I still believe in saviors.” Those words will be my next tattoo, with an anchor on one side and a cross on the other.

Demon Hunter: “I Will Fail You”
My affinity for this song can be traced back to my brother who was the first to share it with me. As I sought to rebuild a new and better me, this song was my rock bottom looking up. It was on my mind as I forged new friendships. It echoed in my mind every time I made a mistake at work or didn’t live up to my kids’ expectations. I was even humming it to myself as I drove to my first date with Annie. “I will fail you of that I’m sure.” Perhaps I realized the knowledge of eminent failure would push me to do better. Knowing I would fail could have made successes sweeter. Or maybe my mindset took away the burden of trying to be perfect so I wouldn’t beat myself up for failing to attain perfection.