Y'all!!! Today is the day! Red Sea Road is released to the world and available everywhere you buy music. Thank you for buying, for listening, & for sharing these songs. I'm so humbled and grateful to feel like I have a family of fans and friends who support and encourage me along the way. It makes this whole music-making thing REALLY beautiful. I wanted to pull back the curtains and give you a little "behind the scenes" glimpse into why I wrote these songs. Think of it like taking a tour of the birthplace of this record.
The past two years for our community have been heavy, full of suffering and loss. Red Sea Road is a record full of songs about how I’ve seen God show up in the middle of all the pain. I know now more than I did two years ago that He is faithful, no matter what we are facing. I’ve seen Him draw near to our broken hearts and make a way to keep going when there seemed to be no way. There’s an Ann Voskamp blog post where she describes it like this:
“…we believe that an unseen Hope makes a Red Sea Road when there seems to be no way.”
This record is celebrating the unseen Hope we have in Jesus, and the way I’ve seen Him make Red Sea Roads through some of the most difficult & heartbreaking years of my life.
BEHIND THE SONG
I'll be telling the story behind each song on the blog over the course of the next few months, but here's a little glimpse into a few of my favorite tracks from the record....ok, ALL the tracks are my favorite, but here's a glance at three of them. : )
"Find You Here"
This song was born in the middle of a very scary season for our family. My dad was facing a cancer diagnosis, and the unknown journey ahead of us looked bleak and daunting. I’ll never forget watching my parents run into the darkness ahead of them with their hands raised in the air, praising God. Their posture was one of hope, not a hope that skirts its way around suffering, but a hope that faces suffering head on & refuses to believe that this is the end of the story. The peace that we experienced as a family in the midst of that overwhelming diagnosis and all the questions that followed was profound.
I wrote Find You Here out of the beautiful promise from Philippians 4:4-7 , about the peace that mysteriously surpasses our understanding & our circumstances to guard & hold our weary hearts. My prayer is that anyone who hears this song, would encounter the hope & the peace that we found in Jesus during this trial. I’m so grateful to know from experience that God draws near to our breaking hearts, brings comfort into our chaos, and covers our fears with His faithfulness.
My dad is now in remission, and we are so very grateful. We know well that is not the end to every cancer story. There are no guarantees in this life, but we have been so comforted by the guarantee of God's love & the healing to come because of what Jesus did for us all on the cross.
"He Will"
This song comes from Isaiah 61, one of my favorite passages that beautifully describes the ministry of Jesus. I started writing this in the middle of a radio tour up North. We were visiting 3-4 stations a day, and I came down with strep throat in the middle of the crazy travel schedule we were keeping. I felt TERRIBLE, but as I started shifting my perspective from how bad I felt to the promises of God, something started shifting in my spirit. My eyes were fixed on the mountain in front of me, but as I began looking to the One who made the mountains and can move them at anytime, I found comfort and peace. That trip turned into a beautiful memory for me. I was so weak and so sick, but I felt so carried and sustained by the Lord.
I’ve heard it said that our work as believers is to remember. And my prayer is that this song will help me remember , “whether I’m in want or plenty, whether I’m in health or ill,” that God promises He will be who He says He is, a faithful healer and redeemer.
"Red Sea Road"
When the Israelites had an army behind them and the ocean in front of them, an impossible situation, God says this through Moses in Exodus 14:14 , “The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.” And He opens up the Red Sea, making a way where there is no way. We have walked through two years full of sorrow and heartache, and just like the Israelites, we have seen God draw near to our breaking hearts and make a way for us to carry on, even when the grief and the pain have felt unbearable. I wrote this song because I needed to remind myself that no matter what we are facing, God is faithful and He is with us. He gives us a good reason to hold on to hope.
I wrote these songs to remind my own soul that God is faithful. He’s with us, and we can have hope because it’s grounded in an empty grave. Most of the songs were written in the middle of storms that had not settled down yet, but it was in the middle of each storm and each struggle that I was surprised and delighted to find God, showing up and drawing near to our breaking hearts. I hope listeners will get a sense of God’s nearness in these songs, and that they would be reminded that He was broken for us, so we could know that our brokenness is never the end of the story.
Happy listening y'all! Hoping these songs will be a blessing to you because you have certainly been a blessing to me.
Love you Lots,
Ellie
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