I have not written hardly anything in the past several months. It’s been too much. Overwhelming. I have been worn down and not sure what to say. I did write about why I chose to pause on doing The Night Watches broadcast. It has been hard to organize my thinking since then.
Since the beginning of the year, I have been dealing with family problems, faced breast cancer with my wife, watch my pet cat of almost 16 years die next to me on the couch (weekend, no vet available), my father passed away before I could get to him one last time (an extension of family drama ensued) and lost a job (new job starting soon, Praise God!!). At one point early on, I heard God tell me that things were going to happen fast. They have.
My father passed on June 4th. Everything stopped for me. I was barely able to work or function. I could not work on the recording of our next song. Playing at church was very difficult.
The solution was a gift from God. A five day vacation. It was suggested by my brother in-law. He would go with Ginny and me. Five days: a looped route that included the Porcupine Mountains, Houghton/Hancock, Calumet, Copper Harbor, visiting a copper mine, Munising/Pictured Rocks and back home. I could have used about five more days doing all that and taking more of my time. I have mostly taken vacations to visit with family and often work while visiting. A trip for the sake of sight seeing and traveling hadn’t happened in, well, decades. It was wonderful. God blessed the entire thing.
I needed this, badly. I was able to use my DSLR camera for the first time in years. I love the Keweenaw Peninsula. I was able to start decompressing. I was able to start getting past myself. I was able to start a healing process. I still have a ways to go. I welcome the start.
I am not ready to start the broadcast again. Maybe we will do a Christmas music broadcast. Hopefully we will start again in 2027. No solid goals yet but at least I am thinking about it so I can pray about it.
I have returned to recording. Our latest song, There is a River, is close to being released. Until I figure out a few more things and can release our songs on a better platform, it will be uploaded, with the others, on Bandcamp. I feel like I am getting a better handle on all the recording and mastering steps. I will have the final mix completed in the next couple days and then will master the song (if you are not familiar with mastering a recording, you will learn more googling about it than you would if I tried to explain) and then it will be uploaded. The uploads are free to listen to. If you want to download , it will help us if you can make a very small donation when downloading. Software to do this with is expensive.
I am hoping to start on our next song this week also - Praise Spills over. There is a River has fuller production while Praise Spills over will be simple.
All of this to say that we have taken a break, not quit. Please don’t give up on us. I am confident that God still has plans….