So, when we started playing it live about six-or-eight-months ago, by the end of the song—even when hearing it for the first time in most cases—by the end of the last chorus everyone is singing every word. That just sort-of came out of nowhere for me, and I was like, “Whoa!” It seemed like it hit a nerve, because it’s not trying to be everyone’s answer to everything. It’s just resonating with this feeling of like, “Oh, I need God. Like, I actually really do.” Like, when you look back at the Bible, God was constantly putting the Israelites in situations where they would realize they need Him. And there’s this back-and-forth of like, “Oh, I’m good, God, I’m good. I got it!” … “Oh, I don’t got it! I don’t got it!” And I feel like that’s something that’s really healthy for us to be reminded of.

CCM: You’ve also been public about battling bouts of depression through the creation of this project. That word can get thrown around a lot in-and-out-of a lot of difference contexts, so can you tell us how real it was for you? How did you come out on the other side of it?
JS: I don’t feel like I have an ongoing struggle with depression. I remember really struggling with it as a teenager and then not feeling like that for a long, long time. And then when we were working on this record, I just had a season where I was really down. I eventually recognized what it was, to the point of calling it out as actually wrestling with depression…

CCM: Formally staring it in the face?
JS: Yeah, and was trying to decide whether it felt good to admit it or not—I couldn’t really decide whether it did. But for me, I connected it with this feeling of hopelessness, where I’m in a situation and there’s no escape. That feeling of not being able to do something about a certain situation…that helplessness. For a lot of people that wrestle with depression I think that is the turnkey, right? Because if you felt like there was hope, of if you felt like there’s something you could do about it or could see a light at the end of the tunnel, you could breathe a little easier.

Hawk Nelson, CCM Magazine - image

I was working on this Hawk record and I did feel the pressure of making something that “works.” The pressure of making something that people are gonna love, and that will do the things for our career that it needs to do. And at the same time, my wife and I had just had our son, and he wasn’t really sleeping which also meant I wasn’t really sleeping. So, I was super sleep-deprived and that contributed to all of this pressure. I’m the main writer in the band, so during this time I was feeling like the whole thing was on my shoulders and I wanted to crawl in a hole and never come back. I felt unequal to the task. And that contributed to feelings of, “This Hawk record’s never gonna get done. If it does get done, it’s just gonna be because they put me out of my misery and they let us put out something that sucks,” you know? It just felt really hopeless.

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