The Story Behind My Project

Three weeks ago I started working on a little project. Propaganda, one of my favorite artists, has a track on his most recent album called "Tell Me Yours" where he tells people not to thank him, but instead thank the people, places, and events that were strung together to make him who he is. This track is a spoken word piece and he describes it as "almost like a family portrait book." Our lives are filled with people, places, and events which might seem like coincidences or random occurrences at first, but looking back we can see that God sovereignly ties them all together as a part of His plan to make us who we are. Propaganda refers to this as his Crimson Cord (the title of his album). And so my project started when he put out a challenge for us to do our own piece and record a video of us performing it as part of a contest. I actually wanted to write a poem similar to his for a while, but this challenge was the thing that finally got me to pull out my pen and pad.

I worked on this for 9 days and that period of time was so good. As I reflected on God's goodness in my life, I was filled with so much thankfulness for all the people in my life who He used to make me who I am today. And there are plenty more people who I didn't name (so if I didn't mention you, I'm sorry, but I still thought of you and I'm still thankful for you!). Unfortunately, I am not very good at expressing affection or appreciation, but I wanted to do this as a huge thank you to a bunch of people in my life. I tried to take the idea of a family photo album and incorporate that into my video so people can not only hear about many of the important people in my life, but see them as well. While it was this challenge/contest that pushed me to do this, from the start I committed to doing this for these people rather than the contest. If by some miracle I won (which I didn't) that would have been great, but I wasn't too concerned about that. But on top of what I experienced while writing, I was overwhelmed by people's responses as they told me what they thought and shared it with others. And if you know me, you probably figured out by now that I have no idea how to receive compliments. But here's another thank you to all of you. I found my reward from this in y'all. From writing, to people sending me awkward video clips of them, to recording, to putting it all together, to the responses..this experience was awesome.

So I encourage you to do the same. See that the Lord is good. Reflect on your life. The people, places, and events that all tie together to make you who you are. Mistakes and victories. All of it. We don't do that enough and trust me, it will be a valuable experience. And if you're up for it, go ahead and share yours.


Side note: Thanks to Martin Cachero for all his help and the Souls of Michief for the instrumental and one of my favorite songs of all time.

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