Let me explain...
I am one who believes that I hear from God. I have experienced it on a daily basis and therefore believed it for many years. I also believe anyone can hear God's voice. The Bible seems clear on this matter. I sat on the edge of what's known as "The Singing River" and heard God ask me if I would come to Muscle Shoals and bare my soul.
Ingredients
ingredient 1. A Troubled Marriage
ingredient 2. A New Wrestling
ingredient 3. A New Record
ingredient 4. A New Resolve
The Story
My husband and I had just completed a two-month humble-beginnings type of tour of the Common Ground album. I wasn't sure it was a good idea because our "pain-cycle" was continuing to whirl more and more out of control. No matter how much we prayed, no matter how much we sincerely surrendered again and again and again, it seemed to be getting worse and worse. We both believed from the beginning we would always be "in it to win it," but I remember being in a hotel room in Austin, leaning over, beginning to cry, and saying, "God, I just want to be free!"
We ended the tour in a failed show at the Alabama Music Hall of Fame. By this point, I had no idea what we were going to do to remedy the issues of this marriage, and we both knew we had to get help. I felt the Lord was instructing me to take a break from it all, including the debut show of the stage production, which was happening in a few months. I knew what God meant at the river. I was to come to Muscle Shoals and record some of my older songs - the songs I'd written out of the pain of ongoing relationship issues in my life. Some of these songs I'd written in the 90's. These weren't just songs about the issues I was facing in this marriage. They were songs about the issues I'd faced in all relationships.
It wasn't even my intention to record a new album. I was only going to do guitar/vocal versions of these songs, again, just to take a break. This is a whole other story, but we wound up "accidentally" recording a whole album, and it seemed like that was what God had intended all along. It seemed like divine orchestration, and I've learned not to mess with that, but just let it happen. For me, this album eventually became about getting to the other side of my relational issues.
I have explained to people that this was a record of me deeply grappling with the matter of love, and how to love. I was faced with a new resolve. Counseling had begun, forcing me to recognize the necessity to stand my ground against certain things that had been going on in the marriage. Not long after I completed this album, I felt the Lord leading me to move out of our house so that we could get some space and work through our issues with the help of these counselors. In trying to summarize this long story, let me just say that after moving out, our marriage took a terrible turn, and the album was scheduled to be released at nearly the same time that our sudden, tragic, and unwanted divorce was going to be final. I wasn't just shattered at this point. I was dust. I felt I had disintegrated before my very eyes.