I recently downloaded the remixes of You Found Me by The Fray. I know this song is old (Fall 2008, beginning of 2009), but I never stopped to listen to the lyrics. The beat to the Lenny B mixes insanely drive the meaning of this song home, well at least for me. So I went to wikipedia to find some more information on this song. There I found:

“You Found Me” is a tough song for me. It started from just a song with a lot of hate towards God. More of questions, “why” It’s about the disappointment, the heartache, the let down that comes with life. Sometimes you’re let down, sometimes you’re the one who lets someone else down. It gets hard to know who you can trust, who you can count on. This song came out of a tough time, and I’m still right in the thick of it. There’s some difficult circumstances my family and friends have been going through over the past year or so and can be overwhelming. It wears on me. It demands so much of my faith to keep believing, keep hoping in the unseen. Sometimes the tunnel has a light at the end, but usually they just look black as night. This song is about that feeling, and the hope that I still have, buried deep in my chest. -Lead singer and pianist, Isaac Slade

Don’t need to say too much more, but I think most people who know me well understand that the past few years have been difficult. I’ve had my share of life’s difficulties, but the last few years have taken a special prize… and place, for that matter, in my life. The last 3 years have definitely shaped me profoundly. I’m just coming out of the thick of it and hope to share my story one day, but until then… I leave you only with the video.

I was engaging in a conversation with my sister and wife on how my Christian spirituality has “forced” me more into my humanness. The more I have attempted to be like Christ, the more I’ve discovered my humanness – the characteristics of who I am, the sympathies and frailties of my human existence, the inner strengths I would otherwise not know, dreams and passions I never thought would give me life, etc. Human desires I once called “evil” were in actuality just who I was made to be. I’m coming to believe, in part, that this is what Paul the Apostle may have meant when he wrote about being a “New Creation” in Christ. There would be no escaping of who the Christian is as a genuine human being, but an eye opening look at the deepest parts of our existence and experience – that in order to be “like-God” who was born into flesh and blood, we too would also have to become more “like man,” more human, fully human, and at that, more ordinarily human.

I wrote this originally in August 2007 over on my old blog:

“Why does this make us nervous? Marriage needs revision. If the current model of marriage provides married couples with a 50/50 percent chance of success, why are we not advocating for a different way. 50% success rate is just not good enough and equates marriage to a game of Russian roulette. I just care too much about my marriage to accept a 50/50 guarantee. No thanks.

We’re too nervous to have conversations about the marriage institution. Religion, moralism and the Church complicates the issue, preventing any sort of revisions from being made. We might agree revisions are needed, but I’m not sure any of us are gutsy enough to actually start conversing about revised expressions of marriage or what marriage 2.0 actually means.

The Church is the worse, failing to be honest about it’s failure to marriage. The Church hasn’t championed a bold new vision for married life in the 21st Century and instead insist on advocating for a model of married life that’s broken and at best provides a 50% chance. Married couples are too quickly blamed for the failure or demise of their own relationships We rarely consider the fact that marriage itself might need some major improvements. Maybe couples aren’t to blame. As the Church has attempted to protect marriage and the family, I’m not sure it has offered any new hope.”