Album

School of Suffering

Released

2024

In 2023, as I spiraled into new depths of disability and sorrow, I wondered if God even saw me or even cared. One of the ways God helped me that year was through writing and pouring out my hurting heart into these songs.

Listen to School of Suffering

TRACK 1

I Don't Want To Learn It

“I Don’t Want To Learn It” was my newfound honest way of saying to the Lord that if there was an “easy-button” way forward, I’d press it. It was my newfound honest way of saying, “I’m not strong… I’m not brave… I’m weak and scared. I can’t do this. I want to come home.” This latest rock-bottom and newfound honesty and openness with the Lord unlocked some relationship doors with God that I had never gone through before. This song is special to me for that reason, and also because it set this EP in motion. I really needed to say these things to God.

TRACK 2

I Don't Get It, Lord

One of the most difficult things I’ve experienced as a husband and father with a disability is to face that oftentimes I can’t do the things that I want to do for or with them. I can’t crawl around the floor helping them learn to keep the legos picked up, or carry them on my shoulders, or run around the yard with them, etc etc. “I Don’t Get It, Lord” is my way of saying to God, “How am I going to be able to care for these precious people You’ve given me? Don’t You want me to be able-bodied for them? Don’t You want that like I do?”

TRACK 3

Where Is My Father?

One of the first places I really noticed my disability progression was while leading worship at a summer camp in North Carolina. Throughout the week, all of this emotion was welling up inside of me. I wanted to go to a mountain lookout point and yell to God, “Where are you!?!?!??!” I drove up there and there were hikers everywhere. I ended up saving that yell for the School of Suffering record, I wanted it to come in at 2:52 on the track, but when I recorded myself yelling, it just sounded like a yodling person falling from an airplane. Needless to say, I nixed it, and have not really yelled, yet. Jokes aside, sometimes it seems like God hides His face precisely when we feel we need to see His face the most.

TRACK 4

This Brutal Season

This song felt like a lifeline for me during that time. I needed to say some hard things to God, belt some hard things to God, and really mash the keys of the piano. The line that really hurt saying - but in a therapeutic way - was, “I’m so sick of myself, why did You even create me? I thought I’d go from strength to strength, but it feels like only weakness lately.” I think going to God with my brutally honest feelings, rather than brooding alone, felt like the next right step, and I now know with all of my heart that He led me there. And then I realized that Psalm 84 goes on to say, “…they go from strength to strength, each one appears before God in Zion.” My best days of strength are ahead of me, and one day I’ll appear before God in Zion. That insight is one of the ways that God lifted me out of despair.

The Story Behind School of Suffering

The feelings I expressed in School of Suffering had been swimming around in my head for so long that when they finally started spilling out into song, they came quickly. I wrote the simple lyrics and melody for “I Don’t Want To Learn It” while mowing my front yard. I thought, “Yes, that’s how I want to say it.” I came inside, sat at the piano, and I just played. I had never written a song that quickly before… it was almost as if it had already been written. The rest of the EP came pretty quickly after that.

From the Shop

Each item below was created to help you carry the heart of our music into your everyday life, whether through creativity, reflection, or a simple reminder of what matters most.