So a little over a month ago the new EP, She’s Better Than Dreams, released on iTunes. If you haven’t heard much from it or even nothing from it at all, you can catch a preview here.

It’s been a blast hearing what people have thought about it. But the road doesn’t stop there. We’re gonna keep pumping the EP and keep doing some cool things. One of which is on this post, just below. It’s a new single I will be recording soon. Nothing crazy. It will be fun. I recorded a little demo of it for you on the computer so you can catch a feel for what it will be like.

I wrote this for two of my best and closest friends, Mark and Rachel, who just got engaged recently. They are so precious. Being present with them in the ATL when Mark proposed was such a blessing. Over the next couple weeks I was trying to think of a cool way to let them know how excited I was for them and how incredible I thought they were.

So, low and behold, a song was formed. Click on the little play button below to get a sneak peek.

It’s a really fun tune.

Can’t wait to record the single.

Holla.

“Hashtag…boom.”

Let me ask you something.

Has anyone you know ever used this phrase to describe a situation in their life:

“You know, it’s just the right thing at the wrong time…”

They continue…

“I mean, the opportunity is unbelievable. It’s the perfect job…

There’s no question that she’s perfect for me. No doubt she’s the one…

He’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. He’s it…

I know it’s the right choice. I know it’s the best and most logical decision…

All these phrases start this way, but end this way:

“…but it’s just the wrong timing.”

Now let me ask you something else.

Does this logic make sense? Let’s take a closer look. Let’s evaluate this equation solely on the present situation we find ourselves in.

First, you start with the “right thing”. Then add “the wrong time”. Look at it like this:

The Right Thing + The Wrong Time = ??

If you have ever used this phrase before, maybe you have even used it very recently, what is the answer in the context you asked the question?

The answer is “The Wrong Thing”.

You see, the answer has to be answered in the present, not the future. You can’t evaluate something here, and now, based on what you think might happen. We don’t live for the future, nor are we ever called to center our minds on what may come. We simply must focus our attention on the present.

We must learn to open our eyes to the now.

Not the will be.

Or the may be.

Or the hope to be.

You see, the right thing simply cannot occur at the wrong time. This phrasing and logic proves a lot about where we ascribe authority and shows who we really think is over all things. It proves that we believe we truly know what is best. But what we must realize is that the right thing at the wrong time is always the wrong thing for that time. The right thing for your life will always occur at precisely the right time, down to the second. We mustn’t be trapped into turning our clocks ahead too fast.

This is vital because it’s in these moments where we must practice discernment. Discernment to call things the way they are. Discernment to know this “right thing at the wrong time” logic is mentally toxic. If we find ourselves ascribing this phrase to many things in our lives we will become a people that hangs on to things through the span of time, ending up before we know it living in the past. Now we have become fixed on something in our past that not only was wrong then, it’s wrong now and we continue to fixate on it. We hope in a future we think will transpire and when it doesn’t exactly pan out the way we hoped we then become people that swim in the “what might have been, could have been” past. We live in every span of time but the present.

These ideas come for us at hard, but relevant, times.

After working several years in the world of college students I hear the heartfelt cries of students that are frustrated. They’re unhappy. They’re jealous. They’re anxious. They’re impatient. They’re consumed.

They’re trapped in the world of what is happening around them. Put another way, they’re trapped in a world of what is not happening to them. Friends getting engaged. Roommates getting selective internships. Classmates gaining acceptance into higher education programs.

You name it, it’s happening.

It’s happening to everyone around them.

Except for them.

They feel as if it’s one of those cartoon episodes where the rain cloud solely follows the one character. It’s not raining anywhere else. Not a drop. And yet the rain is coming down in monsoon fashion on this one spot.

This one person.

Jealousy sets in. Maybe envy. They want the good things that are happening to the people around them to happen to them. Of course they do. We all do. Why wouldn’t we? They are all good things. They’re not bad things. They’re jobs. They’re fiancees. They’re degree programs. They’re advancing opportunities. They’re all good things. But here is where we miss it:

Those are good things for those people. At those times. Each of those things occurs to each of those people individually. For them. Not for you. Not for me. Because we have our own individual clocks.

We mustn’t wish upon ourselves the things that we aren’t ready for. Things that are right for others for where they are but wrong for us for where we are. We need to understand that what is right for someone else at 5:38 PM on a Friday afternoon could be wrong for us at that very same time. We aren’t standing where they are. And what may be a season of planting for some may be a season of uprooting for us. And while we are going through the time of uprooting we must be cautious to assume that a season of uprooting is synonymous with a season of replanting. That’s not always how it works. Just because things are getting pruned and uprooted doesn’t always mean that process is occurring for the sole purpose of making room for something else. Sometimes things just need to be taken away and not for any other reason than that. Maybe there will be a season of replanting that comes. There’s a good chance that will happen. But there’s also an even greater chance that it will not come right away.

It’s hard to not look around and wonder why others aren’t going through the same processes you find yourself in, or lack thereof. I do that far too often. But the truth is we don’t know all there is to know. They may have been in the very place you are right now a few years ago. And that’s okay.

It may be time for them to get engaged and be married.

It may be time for them to have a child.

It may be time for them to start their doctorate work.

It may be time for them to move to Africa.

And it may be time for you to just stay where you are.

And that’s okay too.

It may be 3:42 in the afternoon for you.

But it’s 5 o’clock somewhere else.

And that means you keep your clock right where it is…

Because you only have 1 hour and 18 minutes before it’s 5 o’clock for you too…

Be patient.

But more importantly, be trusting.

The album has been released on iTunes for just over a week now. If you have yet to purchase it, simply click on this link and you will be directed to the iTunes page. For those of you that have listened to the new EP I sure hope you have enjoyed it. I have received such encouraging feedback from so many people and that has been the biggest blessing.

Around the same time the EP released I bought the new SafetySuit record, These Times. I was blown away. Their first CD was already one of my favorites and I was anxious to catch a listen to the new jams.

It was marvelous.

There were two songs that really stuck out to me lyrically above the rest. One is track six, Never Stop, and the other is track eleven, Life In the Pain. As I began to listen to these songs it was amazing to me how they were interconnected.

At least for me.

I started thinking about the whole concept of “She’s Better Than Dreams” and how most of what brought me to this understanding of a person was painful. It’s not easy being far away from the person your heart chases. It’s not easy not talking to the person your songs are so closely tied to. It’s simply not easy. And what makes the whole process hard is because you already know so much. You know them inside and out. And that knowledge, plain and simple, hurts.

It hurts because you know what you’re missing. It hurts because you know what you’re not with. It hurts because they were a part of you. And here you are, running day in and day out, with not just a small piece of you missing, but in fact a substantial hole. And that’s where another side to this whole “better than dreams” scenario comes out: you now hurt because dreaming about them isn’t enough. Dreaming about them doesn’t bring them back. Dreaming about them doesn’t make your phone light up with an incoming text. Dreaming about them doesn’t create a knock at the door. Dreaming about them doesn’t make the past the present.

No.

And so you’re left with a dream. But you know all too well that having them there with you now is so much greater than having them in world that isn’t exactly reality.

All this connects to these two songs. One of the stanzas in Life In the Pain reads as follows:

And what you don’t know it wont hurt you
And what you don’t know will save you from some pain
But if I could choose I’d let it hurt you
Cause there’s something bout life in the pain

This brings us back to earlier. It would seem that the other side to this is that what we do know can hurt us. And that is true here. Now. What we know of someone hurts when we exist somewhere without them. It hurts because we know the truth. We know the nature of the person that isn’t with us. And so yeah, not knowing how out-of-this-world someone is saves us from heartache. It’s when we have seen firsthand who they are and realize we can’t be with them that makes our heart hurt.

But just as the last two lines say, there’s something about the life in the pain. And most times, if not all times, when we’ve met someone that changes us in so many ways and alters our heartbeat, yet leaves us hurting, we would never go back and do things differently. We don’t do that because we would lose them. We would lose our memories of them. We would lose the impressions they made on us. We would lose, most importantly, our memories with them.

And that’s why the sixth track on the new SafetySuit record stands out after all of this. The chorus is as follows:

I will never stop tryin’
I will never stop watchin’ as you leave
I will never stop losing my breath
Every time I see you lookin’ back at me
And I will never stop holding your hand
I will never stop opening your door
I will never stop choosin’ you, babe
I will never get used to you

This is because we don’t ever get used to these kinds of people. They make us different. They make us fools. They make us romantics. They make us crazy. They make us hurt. They make us better. They make us understand that we could dream all day long and never come up with something better. They make us realize that we could wake up everyday beside them for the rest of time and there would never come a point where we would get used to doing it.

Because there’s no chance they would ever get stale to us.

They don’t go bad. They don’t have an expiration date.

They will be who they are forever.

And that means they will always be that great, no matter what.

The new EP, She’s Better Than Dreams, released today in the iTunes Store.

Get it here: http://tinyurl.com/87exjyj

I couldn’t be more excited.

I could not be more excited to not only share these new songs with you but more importantly to share this side of me. I am so happy to give this window that lets light in to a different area of my soul. I couldn’t be happier to share these lyrics. It gives you my ups and downs of recent days. It shows you that everything doesn’t always end up the way you think. It shows you that people don’t always say yes. It shows you that even when they say no, you still are saying yes.

But that’s okay.

That’s okay because your feelings and your care for someone are not contingent upon what they give back. You don’t care for people because you know they in turn will care for you. You don’t love people because you know that by doing so they will love you back.

You do those things because this person is, to you, worth everything.

Someone isn’t better than your dreams because they told you something similar about yourself. No. They are better than anything in your dreams because that’s all there is to it: it’s true. It’s not true part of the time. It’s not true just when they compliment you. It’s not true just when they take care of you. It’s not true just when they buy you things. It’s not true just when they make you dinner. It’s not true just when they are kind to you.

No.

It’s true 100% of the time. It’s true when they don’t think of you first. It’s true when they even think of you last. It’s true when they’ve had a bad day. It’s true when they have nothing left to give. It’s true when they are complaining. No matter the circumstance, high or low, it’s true.

All the time.

This is the way we want to love.

We want people to know that they are the ones our hearts, souls, minds, and eyes are fixed on. They are the ones we are dreaming about. They are the ones our songs are about. They are the ones that right as we lay our heads down to close our eyes at the end of the day we cross our fingers in hopes to dream about.

We do this because we want our nights to be just as magnificent as our days.

And so yes, today She’s Better Than Dreams.

But she was yesterday too.

And I’m pretty sure tomorrow has a similar conclusion…

This Tuesday is January 10, 2012.

It’s 1.10.12.

Tuesday is the release day.

But Tuesday is not important because the record releases. While that is important, Tuesday is much more than a day when songs are available for download.

This Tuesday is the release day.

But this Tuesday is a release day that personally has zero to do with me downloading anything but exporting everything. Tuesday is not about me taking in. Tuesday is about me letting out.

This Tuesday is the release day.

Tuesday is a day that will be engraved in my mind forever, not because I released a second batch of songs but because it will be the day that I released parts of my heart that have been kept hidden in dark corners for months on end. It will be the day that I can come up for air. It will be the day that I release.

Finally.

Think of it like this.

Everyday, every morning, every night, there is this one thing that continuously knocks on the door of your mind. It plagues you. You can’t get away from it. You try to forget it. You try to burry it. You try to run from it. You try to replace it. You try to erase it. You try to ignore it.

But you can’t.

When you realize your efforts are in vain you spend all your energy on pretending. Pretending that it doesn’t exist and pretending that you really aren’t where your heart tells you you are. You spend days, weeks, months, and as it turns out maybe even years using up your energy to tell yourself it’s not an issue. That it’s not real. That he/she isn’t actually there and that they aren’t as amazingly mind-blowing as your heart truly believes.

You look in the mirror and call yourself crazy for wasting so much of your time.

You spend so much of your energy keeping it buried and ignoring it that you become utterly exhausted.

Physically and emotionally drained.

There’s nothing left.

And so Tuesday is the release day for me.

These aren’t just songs. These are emotions. They are emotions with fists. Fists that have been punching my heart, soul, and stomach for days and nights. There’s a time when you feel like you have nothing left to give and that may be true for me now, but as it turns out when you’re on your knees with nothing left sometimes it’s in that moment when you just may have 5 little songs to let out.

And so Tuesday is the release day of those.

These are the most honest, heart-connected songs I have written. They don’t tell stories of the past but realities of the present.

I can’t wait for you to hear them.

But I also can’t wait to finally release them from my chest.

See you Tuesday. #1.10.12