I love the little hook on the guitar on this one. I started plunking around on this the day before I went in for my treatment to take this radioactive iodine 131, and I had a lot of worries. It's lethal, yet somehow the cure for this cancer. Modern medicine is amazing. We actually weren't even sure if I was gonna be treated with it, since that same day they'd found the metastasis to my hip. They considered surgery, but the area is too small, so they decided to give me a double dose of what they were gonna give me initially. RAI is usually tolerated really well, except when you get into higher dose, like mine was. I am grateful however, it was nothing like chemo or radiation. That night I was up, not feeling well, scared, wondering is this gonna work? I picked up the guitar Tim got me for my hospital stay and started plucking this line around again. I thought of all my worries and how God was there with me... that line about "Just can't sleep" I couldn't get myself to sleep. I was too scared, but there was God, comforting me as He always does, assuring me, my life is in His hands, I can rest there.

I wrote this after my treatment. After all my concern over what I would lose vocally, I was floored that somehow this high note came out of my throat. It was shaky and uncentered, but there in a way it had not been before. I added another 1/2 verse after I was back home and thinking it needed a little more to it. The harmonies and call-backs came about 15 minutes before we had to finish our recording session. Which is a miracle in itself, ask anyone who's needed me to sing harmony for them :-)

I wrote most of this right after my surgery in November. It was difficult hearing what my voice sounded like, deep, low and I couldn't hold a pitch. Any medium range tone would have this warbly thing happen that I couldn't control. It was pretty scary for me; thinking I couldn't do it anymore. Tim was a huge encouragement there... "Do what is necessary, do what's possible and before you know it, you're doing the impossible." He shared that in his sermonette at the beginning of the year. I can't tell you the life that spoke to my soul...

I started hinking around with this chord progression and the line "As funny as it seems," just rolled out along with the first verse and the chorus... the thought of running away with God, rather than running from Him, contrary to all the itching of being human. It becomes a blur as to when the rest of the song came, but I know I started it before I went in for my RAI treatment and finished it when I was back here in the "tower". It was still scary and gets that way from time to time, but I'm comforted by the One, the Love, is who so much more than anything in this world :-)

Okay, this last one, I started writing once I got back home, after treatment, after isolation... looking at what God's been putting before me for a while. Can I be free? What holds me back? Just a funny little tune, I didn't even have all the phrasing or lyrics down when we recorded it, but I tried it anyway and like the way most of it fell. Can you be free?