August 4-Track B-Side: My Heart Heard

Art by Billis Helg

On "House of Love", I wrote about love, and how the greatest type of love comes in letting go of expectations and entering into the darkness. This track speaks more to the darkness involved in that. I used to more or less believe that as soon as I personally had forgotten about some wrong that I had done, God had forgiven it as well. Now, I do not believe that's how it works. Grieving sin is a necessary part of the process; self-justifying and forgetting it just leaves it there under the rug, waiting to be repeated.

I guess that's what this song is about - building a life on top of unstable ground, ignoring faulty foundations until the whole thing is about to collapse. It's not an easy thing to take a look underneath, see what's really there at the foundation, and try to begin again. But certainly it's better to start with very little than it is to quickly approach an end with your hands full of stuff.

Recording:

Track 1: Piano
2: Acoustic guitar
3-4: Vocals

Lyrics:

Lord, make me right
I know I’m not in the light
Broke another branch off the vine today
A gardener with the hands of a child

Keep still my tongue
Until my excuses are hung
Who is justified by the silence
Waiting to hear if the judgment has come

But I’m not unnoticed by you
And when you told me the truth
I locked up all of your words
But you made sure my heart had heard

Lord, give me sight
Take out the beam in my eye
Left to decay since the day I was born
The pleasure and pride of my life

House built of sand
Blueprints were written with crayons
The air starts to stir with drops of rain
Surrounded by the gods of my hands

But I was not abandoned by you
Your voice still whispered the truth
And in the thick of the flood
Your song thunders in my blood

Singing “love
Here’s the fire
Take your heart
And If you trust me
Break
It and place
It on the flame

This flame
Is my heart
Broken for you
And what you take there
Dogs, lightning and rain
Will not separate“

Lord, make me right
I know I’m not in the light
The branch hangs broken on the vine today
I don’t know if it will survive