I Still Believe Read online

This narrow road I’m walking, this world will try to draw.

  Your Word will help me fight it, with You I’ll face it all.

  The song’s main question is, What am I supposed to do? That’s the question I was asking in that cabin. I had gone there for a complete breakthrough, but I didn’t think I had even taken a step in the right direction, much less had a breakthrough.

  What was I supposed to do?

  The song, though, did express my faith that somehow, some way, God would deliver me from my pain: “Quickly will I call, quickly will You answer my cry.”

  The problem was that God and I had different definitions of quickly.

  But I could see in the song’s words that God was saying to me, Hey, I’m still here—even when you’re stumbling. I love you. I’m thinking about you. I am here.

  In the time at my parents’ home after Melissa’s death, I had struggled to clearly communicate with God. It was different in the cabin, though, because I did feel a strong connection. I just wasn’t receiving the full breaking of my heart I had wanted.

  “Lord, I want this!” I said at one point. “I’m falling and stumbling and getting bitter and angry, but I’m fighting through to get this!”

  I felt as though the Lord was responding, I know that you’re calling out to Me, and I’m telling you that I am breaking your fall. My thoughts about you are more than the sands of the sea.

  On the third and final morning, I left the cabin, disappointed that my expectations hadn’t been met. It certainly hadn’t been a relaxing getaway in the mountains. I hadn’t eaten or slept much. I felt like I had been on the losing end of a long boxing match.

  Lord, I prayed, my heart’s desire was to have a huge revelation, weeping in Your presence, feeling Your healing touch—something momentous. I don’t understand why nothing has changed.

  After eating at a restaurant near the cabin, I started down the mountain and toward home. The demo CD I’d recorded was in the car, and I slipped it into the player to hear how it sounded. As “Walk by Faith” played and I listened to the words God had given me on my honeymoon, the eagle landed on the perch.

  Warmth penetrated my heart, melting the ice that had built up. All the pent-up emotions suddenly released. The floodgates of my eyes burst open. I came to a stop sign at an intersection, pulled over to the side of the road, and buried my head in my hands.

  As moving an experience as writing “Walk by Faith” had been, and as many times as I had sung the song and meditated on the words, I had never fully grasped exactly what the song was saying until that moment on the side of the mountain road.

  “Okay, Lord,” I said aloud in the driver’s seat. “I can’t see, but I will walk by faith. I don’t understand, but I know there’s a greater plan. It will be okay—You will make it okay!”

  I had been broken before, so I knew how it felt. And I knew I had just been broken again. What a relief! I remember being so thankful.

  “I’m sorry, Lord, for being so upset,” I said. “I get it now.”

  I had experienced several monumental moments in my life when God had broken me down or spoken to me in a powerful way: the summer youth camp, in the chapel at Bible college, when I wrote “I Still Believe,” my time with Jon Courson. That brief time beside a mountain highway was another of those moments. As I look back now, I recognize that time was the ultimate turning point in my processing what had happened to Melissa. I still encountered battles—and still do—but starting at that point, everything changed immediately.

  I pulled back onto the highway and resumed my drive home. I continued talking to the Lord as I drove down the mountain, but the conversation had a drastically different tone—or at least the tone on my end of the conversation had changed.

  Everything around me just seemed so peaceful. I now had hope. I could see the mountains around me again, and they were beautiful!

  That was probably the quickest two-hour drive I’ve ever made in my life. I returned home a different man. The steps of healing that followed came closer and closer together. Hope and expectancy characterized my prayer life. Here I am, God—let’s do this! I would pray. It’s time to live. I’m broken, but whatever You want me to do, I’m willing.

  SIGNING UP

  In December 2001, I received an e-mail from Tyson Paoletti, a record company representative at BEC Recordings.

  “We’ve been hearing a lot about you from a friend,” Tyson wrote, “and we would like to talk with you. Do you have a demo you could send?”

  You bet I had a demo I could send!

  I knew that Brandon Ebel was the head of BEC—which stood for Brandon Ebel Company—and when I was a teenager, my family had gotten to know him and camped next to him two or three times at the Cornerstone music festival. I made sure to let Tyson know that.

  A few days after I sent my six-song demo CD, Brandon called me. “Bro, what’s going on?” he asked. “How is your family in Indiana?”

  I told him my family was doing well and about Melissa. I could tell by his reactions from the other end of the line that he was shocked. He expressed his condolences and then paused.

  “These songs—oh my goodness,” he said. “There is a lot here. I’d really like to work with you.”

  As excited as I was, I told Brandon I couldn’t give him an answer yet.

  “I need to pray about this,” I said. “I’ve been through a lot, and I need to make sure every decision is from God.” Brandon told me to take all the time I needed.

  Brandon and I stayed in contact, and one day he asked about my interest in recording an album as part of a yearly worship project called Any Given Sunday. That opportunity really interested me because I loved leading worship. Plus, several people had suggested that I make a recording of songs I had written—I had some more congregational-style songs that were about what God had done in my life—along with some of the popular worship songs I led in churches that were written by others.

  I prayed about that in addition to the opportunity with BEC and felt God giving me the go-ahead on Any Given Sunday. While we were working on the worship project, I felt strong confirmation about signing a contract with BEC.

  Recording contracts are much more involved than people outside of the music industry realize. To give a simple overview, when a singer-songwriter signs a contract, he signs over part ownership of the songs he writes for that particular label. The contract calls for the artist to record a certain number of songs for each CD, and the artist and the label have to come to agreement regarding marketing and promotion of CDs and singles.

  I haven’t had a contract that required me to take part in concert tours, but artists understand that tours are part of the deal in terms of marketing and promotion. Labels invest money in artists, so the artists are expected to do their part to help sell CDs to pay off that investment. An artist who doesn’t tour probably won’t be re-signed by his or her label after recording the number of CDs established in the contract. On top of all that, an artist and the label have to come to terms on who gets what percentage of all the thises and thats in a contract.

  Jean-Luc, with his experience in the recording industry, was a big help. Even though I was sure that signing a contract was part of God’s plan for me, Jean-Luc wanted me to make sure I also made a good business decision. And I don’t mind admitting that signing a contract to produce a certain number of CDs—to be filled with songs not yet written—can be a little scary. There were numerous times in the process of negotiating my first contract when I asked myself, What if I run out of ideas for writing new songs?

  Even after being in the industry for more than ten years, I haven’t forgotten how Jean-Luc advised me in my early years, and I have tried to give the same advice to promising young artists getting started in the business. I know this concept bothers some people, but the reality is that ministry and business do intersect. Making good business decisions is an important part of being a good steward in ministry.

  I had the Any Given Sunday project working—whi
ch later became Carried Me: The Worship Project—and then in May 2002, I signed a three-record contract with BEC.

  I had been updating my parents throughout the contract negotiating process, and they were the first phone call I made with the news: I officially was a signed artist!

  Of course, they were excited. But my dad, as usual, told me, “I’m so proud of you because you’re serving the Lord.”

  Signing the contract was such an amazing moment. I was stoked and ready to go. My personality type is such that when it’s time to begin something, I give it my all.

  I was ready to do whatever the Lord wanted from me. I knew that He had opened that door for me—just as He had opened many doors previously to bring me to that spot—and I would be sharing the songs He had given me.

  All right, Lord, I thought. I fully know what You’ve done for me.

  REACHING OUT

  It’s a good thing I had a “Let’s do it!” mentality. After signing, I recorded two albums in the span of about a month.

  Stay was the first CD released, in September. The twelve songs included “Walk by Faith,” “I Still Believe,” and “Breaking My Fall.” Five of the six songs on the demo I had sent to Tyson were included on Stay. The other CD, Carried Me: The Worship Project, released about a year and a half later and contained a mix of my songs and ones written by others.

  Recording a CD can be physically and mentally taxing. Recording two CDs in about a month—well, I’m not sure how to describe that. It was a crazy month, for sure, but my body and mind were energized from knowing my songs would be reaching more people than I had dreamed of reaching and would be offering them messages of encouragement and hope.

  A big break for my career came with the invitation to participate in the forty-city Festival Con Dios tour, a traveling Christian music festival started the previous year by Newsboys. When I was officially booked to join the tour, I thanked God for allowing me to share my music and testimony with so many people across the country.

  The headliners of Festival Con Dios (Spanish for “Festival with God”) were Audio Adrenaline, TobyMac, MercyMe, and Out of Eden. Others on the tour included Pillar, The Benjamin Gate, Tree63, Sanctus Real, Everyday Sunday, and Aaron Spiro. I had been listening to those other artists—some for more years than they cared to hear when I informed them—and now I was sharing the same stage and ministering alongside them.

  Festival Con Dios was so rad!

  Six semitrucks carried a full-size stage, lights, and one hundred thousand watts’ worth of sound equipment. The setup had room for about ten thousand people, who could bring folding chairs and blankets to sit on. The festival wasn’t all about music, either. There was a “village” with merchandise tents, food vendors, bungee jumping, and other games that traveled with us. Plus, a professional motocross racer was part of the show and performed aerial stunts on his motorcycle.

  Needless to say, there was a lot of energy involved in the tour.

  Right off the bat I got to taste the good life of touring because I was able to travel by bus. The less-glamorous side of touring includes traveling with a fifteen-passenger van and a trailer. The members of the band travel in the van—taking turns driving—and haul their equipment in a trailer hitched to the van. Some bands on the tour had to do the trailer-and-van routine.

  But to start with, BEC told me, “We want you just to go and do what you’re supposed to do,” and footed the bill for me to share a bus with another band. I sure enjoyed the “luxury” of the bus and felt bad for the trailer-and-van bands. If I had known then what I learned from my trailer-and-van experience on my first solo tour—when we played about 220 dates and were on the road for three hundred days—I would have felt even worse for them and probably tried to make as much room as I could on our bus.

  My band consisted of me, a guitar player, a bass player, and a drummer. We usually had about twenty minutes on stage at each of the stops. When I had made my onstage debut playing one song with The Kry, I was almost a nervous wreck. Starting out on Festival Con Dios was a little nerve-racking when I thought about being on stage with my own band. But once I got on stage, I never found myself in “What do I do now?” mode because I was confident in what God had called me to do.

  Stay released during Festival Con Dios, and with the tour and the CDs reaching a growing audience, Melissa’s story and my testimony made an immediate connection with more fans. People wrote and e-mailed me, and fans came up to me on the tour to tell me their stories about their journeys with family members who had cancer. Others who had had loved ones pass away told me how personal and meaningful the words of my songs were to them.

  It was difficult to see and hear the pain in others’ eyes and voices and words when they shared their stories, and there were emotional times around my merch table as fans would ask questions about my experiences and we would pray together. I loved the opportunities to have those conversations.

  Even though I knew how widespread cancer is, I was blown away as I began to realize just how many people are directly impacted by the disease. But hearing and reading as many stories as I did confirmed a promise God had made to me in my most painful moments: He had a plan and a purpose for me that stretched far beyond anything I could have initially seen.

  CHAPTER 14

  FALLING IN LOVE AGAIN

  From the beginning, I was in my element with Festival Con Dios, because with that many bands, there were plenty of other musicians I could introduce myself to. Why not? I was outgoing to begin with and excited to be touring with them.

  At the beginning of the tour, as I had watched the other bands while I waited my turn, one particular artist caught my eyes and ears: a red-haired girl with a big voice who was the front for The Benjamin Gate, or TBG for short.

  TBG was a band from South Africa, and we had both played at Fish Fest in California earlier that summer, although I hadn’t met them then. TBG also had been part of the first Festival Con Dios, and let me tell you, they could really rock it on stage. I assumed their lead singer—whose name, I asked and was told, was Adrienne Liesching, or Adie—was a loud and hardcore rocker chick.

  After a show, while I was making the rounds of getting to know all the acts, I made my way over to Adrienne and introduced myself. She said hello in her South African accent, but it wasn’t what I expected. She wasn’t anything like what she was onstage: she spoke in a soft and mellow tone.

  Our first real conversation occurred after she had sprained an ankle in Atlanta, Georgia. The remnants of a tropical storm were pounding the area, and one of the tents looked like it was about to fly away in the storm. Our tour manager took off running to try to save the tent and accidentally ran right into Adrienne. It looked like a well-executed tackle in a soccer match. Adrienne thought she was fine and told our tour manager to go help with the tent. But when she tried to stand up, she couldn’t.

  I felt bad for her, because it’s difficult for a rocker chick to rock out onstage sporting an ankle brace. I saw Adrienne the next day and said, “We prayed for you today before we went on.” (Our band did pray for her—I promise!)

  She thanked me, and as we talked, I kept noting how Adrienne actually had a quiet spirit about her. I almost had to make sure I was chatting with the same person I had watched onstage.

  My merch table was two spots down from TBG’s, and because Adrienne was their lead singer, she spent much of the day sitting at their table, meeting fans. I learned later that Adrienne had not yet heard me talk about Melissa onstage but that she had heard from her band mates that I had an inspiring story she needed to check out. They’d had an entire conversation about my testimony in their van one day, and that had intrigued Adrienne.

  Adrienne overheard some of the follow-up conversations about Melissa I was having with fans at my merch table, and during slow times around the tables, she would come over and say her soft “Hello” and ask me about Melissa. She would ask questions such as “What was she like?” or “How did you first meet?” or “Would you te
ll me about her walk with the Lord?” I liked how at ease Adrienne appeared to be talking about Melissa, and that made it easy to talk to her.

  Other musicians would mention my testimony, but Adrienne had a deeper interest in learning more than the others did. She was really sweet about it. And it wasn’t because she was attracted to me. She seemed to be intrigued by Melissa’s and my story.

  I’d see Adrienne out eating lunch or walk past her heading in the opposite direction, and I would acknowledge her with a “Hey, how’s it going?” My band and her band would sit together sometimes while other groups were performing, and when TobyMac was doing his thing onstage, Adrienne and I would get up and dance all silly like. She had done funky jazz dancing growing up in South Africa, and she tried to teach me a few moves. We’d also do the “running man” hip-hop dance MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice made popular during the late 1980s. I know Adrienne won’t mind me saying this, but we basically were just being dorks. We were good friends, comfortable around each other, and not trying to impress the other.

  Sometimes we would walk to our merch tables together and, because our tables were close to each other’s, hang out in that area and just chat. She was so pleasant to talk with.

  Adrienne was in a challenging spot. She was a young lady (twenty-one), far away from home, and always traveling with all dudes. She didn’t seem to have anyone around her as a go-to person—that one person she could talk with about anything.

  “Iron sharpens iron,”10 and she needed an iron-type person.

  Adrienne had a noticeable hunger for God. When she heard me talking about the Lord, she would ask questions about God just as she had asked questions about Melissa—in a personal and deeply interested way.

  The more we got to know each other, the more our conversations focused on God and spiritual matters. Because I could see her desire to deepen her relationship with God, I felt comfortable challenging her gently and urging her to grow spiritually.