I spent most of the last half of my sophomore fall semester chasing a relationship with a freshman girl I had met at the Baptist Student Union. She was a ball of fire, and I felt that we hit it off right from the start. We had gone on a few dates, and I was beginning to think it was really going somewhere. And maybe it was until she went home for Thanksgiving break and rekindled a romance with her high school sweetheart. I had struck out again.
I was heartbroken and very frustrated. It felt like everyone had somebody except me. Looking back now, that wasn’t true at all. I had a great circle of friends who were single, and I enjoyed a wonderful social life of real and meaningful friendships. But, like I said in the opening blog, I was a hopeless romantic. I had tasted what I thought was real, deep love my senior year of high school, and I was desperate, perhaps way too desperate, to find it again.
But this heartbreak felt like a last straw. Over the spring semester, I cast off trying to find someone to date. I did the proverbial closing off of my heart. I carried this attitude with me to Sarasota for the summer. In my interactions with the guys in the youth group, I was too cynical. The heart behind it was good in the sense of pushing them to care more about their relationship with Jesus than chasing after girls. But my messaging was poor at best because it came from a jaded heart.
A couple of weeks into my internship, we took the youth group on a mission trip to Mexico City where we served families that are forced to live in the garbage dumps. It was an eye-opening experience to say the least. We served with a team that provided some basic medical care to the families, and we did Bible lessons and played with the kids, giving them a respite from their terrible existence. I started writing this song when we returned to Sarasota from that trip. In part, I was overcome with a sense that I was where I belonged. I had answered a call that God had put on my heart, and I felt at peace working, serving and living in Sarasota for the summer. And as I thought about the heartbreak I had left behind, it was a welcome change. It also rained practically every day at about the same time. The sea breeze would stir up the clouds, and a storm would pop up. I tried to capture the feeling of seeing those clouds build and the temporary relief a shower or storm would bring to the heat and humidity of a southwest Florida summer. It was new and novel to me, and I hope the song was able to convey the way it felt.
I think I actually finished this song before going back home, so the bridge was an anticipation of how I would feel. It turned out to be mostly true. Though I put on a front like I didn’t care, I was still very heartbroken. Still, I told myself that wasn’t the most important thing. And I think that was true in a lot of ways. I was pouring myself into leading worship, studying the Bible and relationships with folks at the BSU. And I was growing as a person and in my walk with the Lord. Little did I know what was waiting just around the bend in the fall of 2002.
I have always loved this tune. I really felt like it was a hit or as close to one as I could get. It was poppy and fun unlike most of the songs I had written. Maybe the lyrics were a little too personal with the references to Danville and “my mountains”, but the theme still felt universal. This was also about as close as we got on the record to sounding like a band that had it all together. As you listen, try to ignore the guitar getting off of the half-time fill in the bridge. Sean did such a great job moving between the straight and half-time beats on this song. I should have redone the guitar parts to synch with the drums perfectly. Doug’s violin part was phenomenal. I was so blown away the night he played that in my apartment. He had turned my song into an alt-country hit! Zack’s bass parts on the opening and outro were so good. I still marvel at them every time I listen to it. I really wish we still had the files for all of the parts so I could fix the guitar in the bridge. Nonetheless, I’m giving you the album track so you can hear the good stuff that everyone else did on this tune. Let me know what you think about the story and the original album version of “A Thousand Miles”!
