Let the Joy Come Out

I almost didn’t write a third song.

After the Songwriter’s Journey — after the sessions, the songs, the story work — Isaac and Thorald made an offer to the group. There was something called the Returning Artist Journey. More sessions, more songs, going deeper. They presented it before we’d even had our celebration, before I’d ever set foot in a recording studio. I hadn’t yet experienced what it felt like to hear my own voice come back through headphones. I hadn’t yet understood what any of this could mean.

I said no, thank you.

Not because of the money. Not because I didn’t love what we’d made. I said no because I genuinely didn’t think I was an artist. The Songwriter’s Journey was a thing I was going to do once, heal some things, and that was it. I wasn’t a singer. I wasn’t someone who made music. I was someone who had done something meaningful and was ready to move on.

Then I went to record.

I remember standing in the studio for the first time, hearing my voice back through the headphones, and something shifted. Something I hadn’t expected. When the Songwriter’s Journey was first built, the singing part — the voice as an instrument — wasn’t fully developed yet. There was one stage about the voice and then it sort of faded into the background. I hadn’t found my connection to my singing voice. I was just getting through it.

But in that studio, hearing myself sing my dad’s song back, I got it. I finally got it. And I thought: oh. I have to do this again.

A few months later, I called them and said yes.

Here’s what I knew going in: the first journey had been, in some ways, easy. Not emotionally easy — nothing about grieving your father in real time is easy. But the material was right there at the surface. My dad had just died. California was still raw. I didn’t have to excavate anything. The songs arrived because the feelings were already waiting.

The Returning Artist Journey would be different. I knew that. I’d have to go deeper, touch things I’d been carefully not touching. I resisted starting for months. And then, not long after I’d begun working for the Brothers — yes, I became their Journey and Community Manager right around the same time I was also their client, which was its own kind of beautiful strange — Isaac asked: when are you going to start?

I finally said okay.

I cried through most of it.

I moved seven times before I finished elementary school. I’ve mentioned this before — it used to feel like a quirky fun fact and it took me years to understand what it actually did to me.

My parents were in and out of employment when I was young. I didn’t know that at the time. What I knew was that we moved, and then we moved again, and then we moved again. What I didn’t know was why. My grandparents helped make sure we were always okay — we were never without a home, never without food, never without what we needed. My basic needs were always met. I was loved and taken care of.

But something still wasn’t right. And a child doesn’t need to understand the reason for the instability to feel it in their body. I felt it. I carried it. I grew up into an adult who lives in a near-constant state of anxiety — always waiting for the other shoe to drop, always braced for the thing that’s about to go wrong, always half-absent from the present because my brain is busy catastrophizing the future.

I’ve always been okay. I know that now. But knowing it and feeling it are different things, and for a long time I couldn’t feel it.

When I started the Returning Artist Journey in 2022, something had shifted in my life. I was a couple of years into my own apartment — the independence I’d fought so hard for. I was fully remote. I was working for the Brothers, which was new and exciting and immediately fulfilling in a way I hadn’t expected. Things had settled. For the first time in a long time, I could feel the ground under my feet.

And then Thorald shared a song.

It was by Maverick City Music, a worship collective I hadn’t encountered before. The song was called “Jireh.” I listened to it and something in me changed — the way a song can sometimes find you at the exact right moment and rewrite something in your DNA. There’s a line: you are enough, forever enough, more than enough. And then: I will be content in every circumstance.

I had needed to hear that for a long time.

What I loved about Maverick City Music was what I love about the way I think about God: it wasn’t overtly religious, wasn’t organized or prescribed or shoving anything down anyone’s throat. It was just… a sense of something more. A grace bigger than the moment. A permission to stand in it. The three of us — me and Isaac and Thorald — were all a little obsessed with them at the same time, and that shared energy found its way into the song we were making.

That question mark. I put it there on purpose. Even in a moment of feeling good, I’m still asking: am I though? Have I really found it? Is this real or will it disappear? That’s what anxiety does. It follows you up the mountain and waits for you at the top.

There’s a thing about mountaintops. Getting to the top feels incredible. But you can’t stay there — going up is hard, coming down is hard, and the whole journey is the point, not just the view. “Jireh” is literally about that: I will be content in every circumstance. Not just on the mountain. Every circumstance. The valley too.

Joy, I’ve learned, is not a destination. It’s not something you arrive at and then get to keep forever. It’s something you practice. Something you let in, and let out, and let in again.

Crack me open.

That’s the line that means the most to me. Not “I found joy” — but crack me open. Let it in. Make room. Be willing to be broken open by something good, not just something hard.

I wrote that line about the version of myself I’d lost somewhere along the way. The one who got so caught up in anxiety and survival and waiting for things to fall apart that she forgot to just… be. I didn’t recognize her for a while. I’m still finding her.

Where am I with joy right now? Somewhere in the middle, like always. Closer than I was. Still working on it.

Last summer I fell in love with Labubus — these little collectible plush figures that are objectively delightful and also, I’ll admit, a little absurd. I bought one. Then another. They bring me genuine, uncomplicated happiness, and for a long time I almost talked myself out of that because some part of me thought: you’re an adult, this is silly, you shouldn’t need this. And then I thought: why not? This is bringing me joy. Why would I not embrace it?

That’s the practice. Not the big spiritual mountaintop moments — though those matter too — but the small daily choice to not hide the things that light you up. To be unapologetically excited about what excites you. To let the joy come out, even when it looks silly, even when it’s a little pink plush monster on your handbag.

I wrote “Joy” four years ago. I’m still learning what it means. I think that’s okay. I think the song knew something I didn’t quite know yet when I wrote it — the way songs sometimes do — and I’m still catching up to it.

Took so long to find me.

Yeah. Still finding. Still here. Still letting the joy come out. 🩷