Happy New Years to all! I hope it has been a great time of celebration and hopefully good introspection and some solid dreaming. And though 2018 feels much like 2017, I love when the calendar gives an excuse to rearrange, reprioritize, and feel a temporary clean slate from life. I am looking forward to this year, and believe deeply that it will be one of the most important years of my life.
I am wrapping up my day, eagerly awaiting the week ahead. This week, I have the pleasure of working with some of the sweetest people on planet Earth. I met Val Tromonte, Sol Grimes, Gabby Li and Gabby Case in July of 2017. We were all students at the United Pursuit School of Worship up in Knoxville, where God did such a special knitting of hearts, souls and dreams. The people at that school are such a deep and rich part of my story now. At the school, God unlocked a freedom and passion for poetry in my friend Val. It was so wonderful to watch him step into it at school. I could tell he really came alive when he would share his poems. We would be worshipping together and all these beautiful words and phrases would come to him. It was unlike anything I had experienced. It was refreshing. Val, Sol, Gabby and Gabby were in the same band at school, and they arranged and performed music for Val's poem for the school's final showcase.
After school, Val decided to follow his passion and pursue making an official album of his poems. That's where our worlds collided. Over the past couple months, we have been planning this time in Athens to produce his record, and I am so honored he thought of working with me. This will be unlike anything I have ever made, but I am excited about the possibilities of what this will become.
Today, everyone showed up from all across America. Val from Oklahoma, Sol from Illinois, Gabby Li from Oregon, and Gabby Case from Atlanta. I still can't believe this was possible and that we made it happen! We got coffee, caught up, and I got to show them around town a little bit. Then, just now we dedicated a couple hours to prayer and worship, to invite God into this process. We prayed for His hand to be on it, and that we would simply have fun and enjoy this creative process.
Tomorrow, 10AM, we begin. Follow along, can't wait to share this journey.