Bebo Norman

I’m watching the sun rise over California through an airplane window this morning.  I am on my way back home again.  I don’t know why but there are random moments such as these when I really do understand with clarity the absolute goodness of God.  I have struggled lately in a much longer story with feeling a certain separation from the real source of all that is good in my life, but today it is very clear to me.  I have been given a life of such richness on so many levels.  The irony is, the abundance of life in the form of so many gifts of relationship, and occupation, and love…that very abundance has of late become the source of this subtle distance and, in turn, a seeping emptiness.  I am astounded how gifts of such goodness can, with constant and time, become idols of misdirection.  Lord Jesus, I thank you this morning for my wife – for her clarity and resolve, her directness and compassion, her unwavering commitment to be who she really is, even as you are changing her heart so much of late, for how much I miss her when we’re apart, for how deeply you have allowed me to fall in love with her.  But I thank you especially this morning that you are reminding me that she is not my Savior.  She is not my lifeline.  She is not you.  I thank you also for my two boys…for their purity and curiosity, for their honesty and tears, for the overwhelming sense of security and fullness and drama they magically seem to fill our home to overflowing with, and the fact that they have no idea how beautifully they have wrecked the hearts of their mother and I.  But I thank you especially that they are not my Savior.  They are not my lifeline.  They are not you.  I thank you Jesus for this improbable career of writing songs and travelling the world to deliver them to eager listeners with hearts wide open.  I thank you Father that you have built a community of believers so vast and rich that just last night I could sit at a table with a group of relative strangers – new friends – and share food that had never before crossed my lips and conversation full of laughter and goodness and quality and depth.  From all angles, in distant and familiar places I have had life placed before me that is good and true.  And none of it is my Savior.  None of it is my lifeline.  None of it is you.

Forgive me for my tending toward replacing the source of good things with the good things themselves.  What a selfish game to play, to put that on the narrow shoulders of the people and things that I love.  To put my joy, my rise and my fall, my very salvation – on the backs of the unequipped.  To bind them so carelessly to a weight that they could never carry, to a weight that they were never meant to carry.

Father, this morning I am reminded of my complete and singular identity as a child of God.  I am nothing more and I am nothing less.  I am neither husband nor father, brother nor friend, living soul nor beating heart but for the grace and the goodness of you.  Life lived and taken, love given and received, only at the hands of the goodness of God.

We are flying over the desert now.  I am on my way back home again.

It’s 4:30AM and I’ve been up for about an hour. This seems to be my pattern lately for some reason…I usually wake up sometime around 3 with my mind running and I can’t go back to sleep for an hour or so. I’d love to be able to say when this happens that there are some profound “goings on” going on in my brain because it might make me seem deep and introspective so that I may perhaps impress you a bit, but the truth is I usually spend my middle of the night hours mulling over pretty normal everyday stuff like schedules or projects I need to do around the house. This time, for example, I woke up thinking about my garage. Deep. (more…)

There isn’t any place on the planet that I would rather be than exactly where I am at this exact moment…sitting on the front porch at our family’s river cabin down here in Georgia. My wife says it’s unfair to call it a cabin because after 30 years and a handful of renovations, it’s really more of a house now, but all I know is that when I was about 3 years old, my father paid $7500 for a two-bedroom, tin-roofed CABIN. My wife is also prone to remind me that anyone with any sense would also lose the “river” part and just call it what it is, a ”lake house.” (more…)

I wrote yesterday about my unsuccessful five-year search to find a “perch” here at our home in Franklin – a place for reflecting and resting and reading in the mornings. A place to look out from, with a bit of a view, but mostly a place that provides perspective. This morning, by random occurrence, I found myself sitting in a chair that I never sit in. It’s a great chair, a leather chair that sits in a certain corner of our Great Room. I bought it years ago because I wanted it (more…)

So, I’ve been looking for the 5 years that we’ve lived in our house down here in Franklin for the perfect place to sit and read in the mornings. It’s kind of like finding the right table at a restaurant or, better yet, the right seat at the right table at a restaurant. You never want to be seated out in the middle of the room – you need to sort of be backed up against something so that you can look out and see all the other patrons, but not be surrounded by them, so that you can hear the rumblings of all the other conversations but still be fully engaged in your own. One of our favorite restaurants here in town is (more…)

I woke up for the day at 4:30 this morning, certainly not according to plan. I can’t for the life of me think of a rational reason to intentionally wake up at 4:30 in the morning. Ever. The long and short of it is that I tend to not sleep as well in general when I’m in a season of writing…if I stir even slightly in the middle of the night, my brain tends to flip it’s switch and start running away with things.   (more…)

I hope you’ll forgive that I’ve been so out of touch with my blog lately. Part of the problem is that over the last few weeks I’ve gotten busy out playing shows again and working on writing/pre-production for the new record when I’ve been back in town. It’s a bit inevitable that when I start travelling/writing/recording again after a nice long break, I still struggle quite a bit with balance. (more…)

I’m on I-40W right now heading from Nashville toward Memphis…in the middle of a two-week run of acoustic shows with Meredith Andrews. Gabe’s driving and it’s an absolutely beautiful day outside. Still cold, which I am WAY over this far into the winter season, but blue sky and beautiful nonetheless. This little batch of shows has really been a breath of fresh air on a few different levels. (more…)

As I drove alone on Wednesday morning toward the Starbucks in downtown Franklin I noticed in my rearview mirror a couple in a minivan behind me. I obviously couldn’t hear a word that was spoken, but it was plain to see that they were deep in the throes of their own private war. (more…)

Man, I sorta checked out here for the last week or so.  Lots of really good time with family and friends, so I guess that’s a pretty reasonable excuse, but I pretty much bailed on keeping up with the blog so I’m really sorry for that.  Roshare started taking a class from 5PM-10PM Monday thru Thursday, so my normal blog-writing time became a bit more occupied with diapers, dinner, baths, and bedtime.   (more…)