Hi there! I’m so grateful you stopped by my little nook on the internet. I’m a wife, a mom, a worship pastor, a singer-songwriter, an author, and an ever growing Jesus-follower. My music and writing comes from my real life, the ups and downs and all arounds that show us who we are and who God is. I work out my thoughts, my faith, and my feelings at my living room piano and sometimes they turn into songs or writings that I put out into the world. Other times they just help me make sense of something I’m thinking about or help me just to sit in God’s presence. I’m continually in awe that God could use all my windy rabbit trail ideas to shape me and lead me to this very place in my life—right where I am supposed to be.

For the last several years I’ve poured all of my creative energy into writing and making music for my local church, which I have loved and will continue to do forever and ever! But these last few years shook my world (as probably happened for you as well) and I had songs to write that weren’t songs for corporate worship. These songs were my prayers and journals and attempts to process my time in the valley of the shadow of death–the pandemic, the national turmoil, fractured relationships, and then in the worst possible turn of events, I lost my mom in a sudden and shocking way.

I joined the ranks of those who walk the road of grief. I learned that grief takes all of your belief systems, all your hopes and dreams, all your joy and your access to beauty and puts them all in a box that sits just out of reach. You walk towards it, but it stays illusive and out of reach for a good, long while. At some point, you get the box back, you get it all back, but not until the grief does its work in you. Wise people who know this road well shared with me that grief becomes a companion that comes alongside you as you live each day, a new reality.

The way that I process and pray and work things out is by sitting at my piano. Pretty much every day in those early mourning days, I was drawn back to that piano bench to see what I was thinking or feeling. The piano is where my heart, my thoughts, and my body catch up to each other. It’s also the physical place I go to remember who I am and to whom I belong. Pretty soon I started writing down some lyrics and recording some melodies. And pretty soon after that I realized I had a whole project, borne out of a really heavy season, but the songs sounded to me like hope, not sadness. They sounded like psalms–first the despair and then miraculously, the hope. Sadness then joy. Doubt then belief. And more than anything what I discovered is the precious friendship of Jesus that walked beside me every single day. I’m so excited to share my new songs with you. These are my Psalms From a Hard Year–from the hardest years of my life. May these songs be a balm to broken hearts.

Peace to you,

Jenny