As a Christian who struggles to get the basics right, I marvel at Paul’s desire to know the Lord more fully and deeply. How could anyone other than Jesus know and experience God any more than Paul had in his life?! Driving alone down the highway headed home for Thanksgiving break, I no doubt was struck by the scenery around me and the contrast with the darkness in my own heart. Through that darkness, I longed to know the Lord. I wanted the power that could raise Jesus from the dead to be alive in me.

Sometimes, when I recall or listen to a song that I wrote a long time ago, I can really say that I was on to something or did a lot of things well in how the song was written and/or arranged. “Here And Now” is not one of those songs (insert crying eyes laughing emoji). I say that a bit tongue in cheek because there are some positive takeaways but only a select few. I do remember very distinctly writing this song the night I had returned home from my internship in Sarasota.

I first met Daniel Shelton sometime around my 10th grade year in school. He had a magnetic personality. Everyone, and I mean everyone, loved him, including me. Music was our connection, and we became good friends.

Part of growing up as a songwriter is figuring how to say something or tell a story in a way that other people will want to listen to. Thinking back to when I wrote this song, it felt like a shift for me in my writing.

“From Danville To Blacksburg” is not a bad song. In fact, I’ve always been fond of the story it tells. It just shouldn’t have been the first track. Hindsight is 20/20.

20 years ago, in the middle of my junior year at Virginia Tech, I convinced some of my best friends that I was a songwriter and that I had an album of songs that were worth recording and releasing to the world. While time has not been kind to the finished product, the heart and spirit of the songs and my burgeoning songwriter's heart remain.

The miscarriage before we had Elijah was hard, compounded by the fact that we had announced Mary’s pregnancy to our families. With the issues related to that miscarriage discovered and rectified so quickly when Mary got pregnant later that year with Elijah, we assumed that having a second child would not be problematic. We were very wrong.

Bed time.

I probably don’t need to say anything more than that. For some parents, it’s a four-letter word.