Nichole Nordeman – Loved Into Living

I was able to write for other people and other projects during that season, so I stayed connected creatively. Now I’m in a sort-of different act, just learning from some of those difficult seasons, some of those broken moments. I feel like in my mid-forties I’m creating the most honest work of my life and I’m proud of it. I couldn’t have written these songs and said certain things twenty years ago. I just didn’t have the perspective. It hasn’t been the traditional, steady climb and then slow descent of an artist’s trajectory. It’s been all over the place, but every season has felt really important in its own way.

CCM: You wrote this in regards to Jonathan Martin’s book, How To Survive A Shipwreck, the inspiration for your song, “Hush, Hush:” It unlocked my longing and language to understand that God can be both storm and shore when our lives are tossed against the rocks. When we are clinging to the plank or two of what remains of the sturdy vessel we thought was sea and storm-worthy, we listen for the Spirit’s whisper. How has that personally been reflected in your life, even just over the past couple years?
NN: I think in unlearning certain ideas about who God is. I definitely grew up with a very traditional understanding that the devil brings hardship, and God brings rescue and comfort. Anyone who’s lived enough life and [experienced] enough pain recognizes that great beauty, understanding and growth come from very dark moments. It’s just not really that simple or easy to assign darkness to the enemy.

Having walked through a painful divorce, having gone through the growing pains of my faith, feeling a little bigger than the container that used to hold it, I want to be open to recognizing the storms that God sends. There are reasons that God smashes our ships on the rock, because we’re not supposed to be in them anymore. He has things to teach us in the water and things to teach us on the shore when we find it. It’s just not black and white like it used to be for me. The simplicity of what God does and what the devil does—it’s just bigger, more complex.

photo: Hannah Burton

CCM: As you mature spiritually, how has that perspective-widening process impacted you personally? What have you learned about God that maybe you didn’t know before, or shied away from, or was taught, “That’s not God”?
NN: I want to be so careful to honor my foundations in the church. I’m still a huge believer in the importance of community and faith and belonging to a body. I think that’s critical for spiritual health. But in terms of really understanding what’s beyond that, it was kind of important for me to step away from [church] for a season. I know everybody always equates your spiritual health to your involvement in your local church, but I don’t know if that’s fair because I feel like in relationships, in friendships, in just seeing the world differently outside of that self-contained community—where it’s this little club that people belong to and all speak the same language—God showed himself to me in bigger ways, in people that don’t know Him, frankly. I really started to understand more about who God was and the kind of love God has for all of us. Just to be able to see the love that He has for His children, for all of His children, without having to run into church to sing about it.

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