I’m afraid of deep water. I have been for a long time. The ocean is so mysterious to me, and the thought of being emerged in this other-world can bring me a slight sense of panic if I even just think about it for too long. It is the part of our planet that makes me most leery. When I go swimming, I stay close to the shore and close to others. The thought of my body dangling there, with only my head above water and no ability to see what’s going on below is very uncomfortable for me. It’s too big! There’s too much! What’s under there? What world lies beneath?

Truth be told, I have a hard time even looking at the ocean in an atlas. You know, those big atlases you find in school libraries where you innocently look at countries and land masses and as you turn the pages suddenly there before you is the end of a land mass and… it’s… all… ocean… these two large, glossy pages of deep blue ocean staring right at you, swallowing you alive. It scares the bleep out of me! I seriously have to close the atlas, walk over to the magazine section, and read Seventeen for awhile.

Maybe I’ve watched too many movies (The Abyss, anyone?). Or maybe it represents even greater fears in me – fear of not being in control, fear of the unknown, fear of what I can’t see or understand.

So, it’s kind of ironic that when Bre and I sat down to brainstorm ideas for my EP Fundraiser Concert poster, I couldn’t get the image of the deep sea out of my mind. It’s been with me for awhile now, actually. I wrote “the fisherman” with the same image in mind. In fact, much of my writing over the past couple of years has been inspired by the sea. And not just the sea, but the sea at night. Double scary!!! I explained to Bre what I was picturing, and she took my ideas and merged them with her own artistic flair and eventually she made a beautiful watercolour painting for me, which was then turned into the poster you see above.

Funny that my fear is all over that poster. But, then again, maybe not so much anymore?

See the boat floating on the water? For the majority of the past three years, I’ve been in that boat. I’ve rowed like crazy some nights. I’ve casually paddled on other nights. And then there were nights when I gave up completely and just lay there at the bottom of the boat, staring up at the night sky, wondering if I’ll ever reach shore again, wondering if I was going to drown or starve or suffocate, wondering if the storm would win, wondering if God was there anymore of if He ever was in the first place. For awhile I even stopped trying to fix the leaks. That boat in the poster? That’s my boat.

The songs you will hear if you come to my concert in July or if you buy my EP in the Fall – these are the songs I wrote in that boat. Mostly.

These songs are filled with my prayers to God, my calling out to anyone who would listen, my heart ache, my loss. But also, more than all of that combined, these songs are filled with something more wild than desperation, more unruly than fear, and more final than death.

These songs are filled with hope.

HOPE!

Hope?

Hope in the middle of the ocean at night? Hope in the loneliness of the sea when all seems lost? Hope in the middle of waters so deep that you can’t see the bottom, or even half-way to the top (if you’re an optimist, that is). Hope in a leaky, creaky, wooden boat seemingly so unfit for the sea that you figure you might as well just abandon ship altogether?

But aren’t I unfit for the sea too?

After I saw the finished painting I was in awe. It was more beautiful on paper than in my head and I loved everything about it. But I couldn’t help but wonder, “Where is the person? You can’t have a boat in the middle of the sea without a person in it.”

One day not too long ago, I found the person in the painting. That is to say, I found myself in the painting…

I am not in the boat because I am swimming!

That’s right, I finally abandoned ship and jumped into the water. I jumped into the middle of my fear and my loss and my heartache and I called out, with water in my mouth and salt in my hair, “I WILL LIVE!”

Sometimes to live, we have to face our fears dead-on.

What used to scare me more than almost anything – that deep, dark mystery holding up my leaky boat, became my home. I lived there, in the sea – drowning, thrashing, floating, swimming – and it’s mystery became my mystery. It’s darkness became my darkness. It’s song became my song. And in all of that, I found life. I found life in the loneliness of the night, in the solitude of the sea, in the vast depth of the mystery of something too big for me to comprehend. The unanswered questions and the questioned answers became a part of me, and I finally discovered peace. I discovered resurrection. I discovered life in Jesus, all over again. But, in some ways, for the first time.

I had to let go of everything, even my leaky wooden boat, but once I did, let me tell you what happened! Well, actually, how about I tell you through some music? Because there’s no other way for me to express it, and even music pales in comparison to what and Who I know deep down. But for me music comes the closest.

And so my songs were written in a boat but also in the ocean itself. And that’s why, in the end, they are songs of hope.

We spend our lives making art, taking in art, hearing art, seeing art, touching art, talking about art, and being art. In all of that we somehow express this beautiful collision of boat and water, of human being and Yahweh.

Through art, we say to each other, “I see a glimpse of this and I want you to see it too…”

The songs I will be singing on July 12th and then recording in the Fall are an accumulation of all of this, and more, and I am incredibly excited to share each of them with you! They are my expression of the sometimes fearful human experience entangled in the always extravagant love of a Creator God.

Perhaps it is the culmination of all art – visual, musical, written, spoken and sung – that gives us the best expression of this experience but, of course, not even that is complete. We live by expressing and we express by living. These songs (and hopefully many more in the future) are a part of my single note in the Song of all songs that rings out from before time began to long after it ends – the Song that echoes now in the mountains and in the valleys and, yes, even and especially in the oceans and in our hearts, too.

“Blessing and honour and glory and dominion to the One seated on the throne, and to the Lamb, forever and ever!” Revelation 5:13b

Concert details:
Date: July 12, 2014
Doors: 7:30pm
Cover: $10
Address: 335 Princess Avenue, Vancouver

To see and hear more beautiful Bre McDaniel art, click here.

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© Stephanie Ratcliff and stephanieratcliff.com, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Stephanie Ratcliff and stephanieratcliff.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.