Prelude

Mangledy-Bangledy

Early one morning in the spring of 2011, I woke up in my own bed sweating, afraid, and completely lost. I felt like a piece of driftwood. The mangledy-bangledy kind that gets ripped off a tree during a storm and thrown into a river three counties over, bewildered and broken. I was in a current I could not control. In a river I had never known. Nothing was familiar and nothing was going the way I had planned.

I had made good plans for my life.

Dreamed up when I was nine years old and the universe was compliant with my every whim. Revised when I was nineteen years old and way smarter than my parents. When I had my existence—and everyone else’s—all figured out. Revisited after college when all I wanted was a safe road without surprises or detours, a well-laid plan that would tell me my place in the world. But that morning in 2011—as a thirty-one-year-old wife, mom, and successful recording artist—I realized the plans I dreamed up were long gone and I was completely lost.

The worst twelve months of my life were barely behind me. But in that moment, trembling in my own bed and wracked with fear, I would have gone back to that hellish year because at least back then I knew who I was and where I was going. Even if getting there meant enduring a fire, thefts, bankruptcy, and complete physical exhaustion.

But the mornings spent lying in my own bed afraid of the future, unsure of my own name, living in complete lostness? They were breaking me.

With no tears left to cry that particular morning in 2011, I stared the terrifying unknown in the face and knew I was at a crossroads. As I lay there in a daze, dreading the day at hand, it occurred to me that I had spent years encouraging other people to live by faith but I had no idea how to live by it myself. I was the kind of girl who wanted faith for other people. Me? I wanted answers, happily-ever-afters, and enough control over my life that I did not have to cling to Jesus for my very breath, my very bread. I only wanted religion.

Security has become the drug of choice for religious people who don’t really want to live by faith. We naively (arrogantly?) assume there are monuments that we can erect in honor of the steadfast certainties our lives are centered around. Mother! Artist! A 401(k) plan! Philanthropist! Gainfully employed! A path, a plan, a purpose! All monuments. All man-made.

My monuments were well erected. Wife. Mom. Musician. World traveler. Woman of purpose. Woman of faith. My band, Addison Road, was on the radio, had traveled around the country on a sold-out tour, and had sold nearly 200,000 albums. I was certain we would be making music together well into our nursing-home days.

But when those monuments began to crumble, I found myself in the midst of broken dreams with no security and no clue how to move forward. Or where to move forward. Each new day I woke up with soul paralysis, feeling like a piece of storm-ravaged driftwood.

Being all mangledy-bangledy from a storm is supposed to be a good thing. At least that’s what preachers and stoics say. Storms grow you up. Get rid of all the bad stuff in you. Refine you with their holy fire! Apparently some people come out of storms as stronger, shinier, more beautifully refined versions of themselves. And I’m happy for those people. Kind of. But that wasn’t me. I made it to the other side of the worst year of my life and was, well—worse.

Seasons of hardship can leave us worse for the wear, at least in my experience. Instead of making it to the other side as a better version of ourselves, we can end up bitter, broken, and barely recognizable. Just because one makes it through a hard season and is still standing doesn’t mean they have traveled down the life-giving road to becoming something new. It just means their feet still work.

My feet still worked. But nothing else did. I was a mangledy-bangledy mess. That morning the Lord whispered something deep inside of my soul. A confirmation of what I long suspected but fiercely avoided: transformation would only happen if I buried the past and blindly, bravely stepped out into the terrifying, unknown future. The Redeemer of stories invited me into a new kind of journey. It was a long-standing invitation to join the Storyteller on the road to becoming. And I finally accepted.

Four years have passed since that morning in 2011, and I have learned that the road to becoming requires much more than just “still standing” after the storm batters and bruises our monuments. It is the journey after the storm, on wobbly knees and tired feet, that matters the most. In my own story, after the chapters of The Dreaming and Destruction, my life unfolded into an unknown season marked by distinct chapters that I have come to know as The Burying, The Lostness, The Waiting, and The Becoming. Side by side with the great Storyteller, these distinct stages made up the path that led me to new life.

Perhaps you know what it feels like to dread the day at hand. Your plans have changed, failed, or come to a screeching halt, and you are living in the in-between. Not who you were and not yet who you might become. Like driftwood thrown into a river three counties over, you feel bewildered and broken. Standing—but all kinds of mangledy-bangledy.

Maybe you have asked the same types of questions that I asked. Am I hopeless? Will I ever become something new? And how? When? What? And isn’t there a book I can read that will just give me the freaking answer already?

Perhaps each new day begins with feeling lost. Another day without a road map. Another prayer whispered or screamed: How long, oh Lord?

If nothing more, I share my story to remind you that you are not alone in yours. I am one of many who have gone before you on this road to becoming and surely in time will circle back around once more and pass through the dreaming and destruction, burying, lostness, waiting, and becoming.

There is a moment in each person’s story when leaning into the unknown becomes the only viable pathway to new life. It is at this weighty juncture that a person of faith must ask, “Do I believe the Storyteller knows better than anyone else how to repurpose a piece of driftwood?” If the answer is yes, pack your bags and get ready to follow God into the unknown. The road to becoming is not easy; it is certainly not for the faint of heart. But it is here we begin to discover that new life—life abundant—is always, ever among us. Dancing on the horizon.