lyrics – a thousand new paths

I’ve been listening to Matthew Perryman Jones on repeat for days. There’s something so soothing about his voice, and his lyrics speak straight to my heart. This one song resounds in my mind long after I’ve turned the music off. The first two verses of Until the Dawn Appears reflect the past year or more of my life, but the song reminds me that the struggle isn’t the end result. There are far better eternal days ahead than the fleeting ones of the past, and that truth brings hope in light of worldly despair. I mean, how awesome is it to know that we are justified by our faith in Christ and promised life eternal, free of sorrow and tears? “And my heart will hang on until that dawn appears.”

Check out the song and tell me what you think. I’m thinking about making another print for the last few lines of the song, but I thought I’d go ahead and put this one out there.

I’ve been turning up the stones in my own discontent,
And I’m finding out where all my hidden sorrows went.
They’ve been laying there for years;
I kept them out of view,
But it’s time I dust you off and take a good look at you.
Oh, how long?
Oh, how long?
Well it’s easier to clench your fists and grind your teeth
Than to look into the sadness that lives underneath.
Well you can kill off all those feelings,
They’ll just turn to ghosts;
They’ll take over your house and become the host.
Oh, how long?
Oh, how long?
Well a man of sorrows walked the shores of Galilee,
And his eyes were cast with joy towards the Crystal Sea.
Well the shadows will be gone and all these bitter tears,
And my heart will hang on that until the dawn appears.
Oh, how long?
Oh, how long?
Oh, you, you won’t let me go….

Today I requested Dave Matthews tickets from my dad for ‘graduation,’ in December. The concert is actually during finals week, which I think will be the best option for escaping the madness of studying and testing, at least for an evening. When I found out The Lumineers are opening for DMB, I instantly opened Spotify and put their album on repeat. Love them.

The more I listened to the CD–at work with nothing else to do but that and a psychology report–the more I began to recognize the particular songs that felt most familiar. You know, the songs that you hear and you wonder how in the world someone could know you well enough to write a song about you, especially considering they’ve never even met you. That is how I define good music.

She’ll tear a hole in you, the one you can’t repair
But I still love her, I don’t really care

Stubborn Love is one of those songs, for me. Listen to it. Read the lyrics. (Trust me, you’ll want to do that or else everything I am about to say won’t make a whole lot of sense.)
The guy is singing about a girl who seems to get love all wrong, but he loves her anyway. I know that girl, and I’m pretty familiar with that guy. What I know about that girl is this: something happened to her to make her the way she is. I believe that the most basic desire of any human being is to love and to be love, and I just don’t think that anyone pushes that away or runs from it without having been burned by a false, incomplete version of ‘love.’ This guy gets that, and he recognizes that to leave her is to confirm her newfound belief that love just doesn’t exist. He chooses to love her through her pain, and I respect that because I feel like those guys are so hard to find…especially when you think about the fact that there are also guys out there who have been just as burned by ‘love.’ The idea of “stubborn love” is really just committment in a nutshell. Love is about comitting to a person regardless of their past or the long road ahead. After all, we all have scars from all the times we have fallen on this path we have been walking.

Also, stubborn love makes me think about how stubborn I am, and there are people who choose to love me anyway. That’s a blessing I take for granted all too often, and being stubborn makes it even harder to accept the love that people try to give. Anyway, I like this song. I like how it sounds. I like the lyrics. I like that there are deep underlying meanings and themes. I like the psychology of it. I just wanted to share that with you.

It’s better to feel pain than nothing at all
The opposite of love is indifference.

In closing, here’s some other questions I’ve been pondering:
Am I in a ‘stubborn love’ kind of relationship with anyone?
Am I the stubborn one or the loving one?
And what is it that I am indifferent about that I really should be loving more?

Tag: lyrics

until the dawn appears

the opposite of love