You know those moments that are the "best moments of your life?" Well, if those moments came all the time, they'd just be "another moment in time." You wouldn't even distinguish them as the best, if every moment was awesome. So, I think it's ok that when I say I haven't had many amazing moments that I would rank as THE BEST. And I certainly haven't had one in a very long time, like years. Until last night. But let me give some background first. And also to note: when things go better in your head than you could've imagined them going... well THAT is what puts a moment over the top and into the category of "best moments ever."
So Jennifer Knapp is this artist, musician, writer, singer, whatever you want to call her: all of the above. She started out in the category of Contemporary Christian Music. This was back in 1998. Or at least that's when her first album came out titled Kansas (which is where she's from). But anyway, I won't do a whole bio on her, you can read her amazing book Facing the Music and learn all about her. So I distinctly remember mere weeks before I left for college, picking up her album in the Family Christian Bookstore. It would've been August 1999. I knew who she was from the local Christian radio station where I had hear her for the first time. (Yes back then EVERYTHING in my life revolved around the church. The Church was my life, for a long long time. I won't go into it here, as to how I felt I was "repaid" for my loyalty, by both the Church and God, but anyway...) I had grown up listening to two types of music Oldies and Christian. Oldies were what my parents played in our car, so I knew more than my fair share of 50's and 60s songs. I still love them. They are simplistic and catchy. Of course I was also a child of the 80s, so I know a ton of those too. But when I could choose my own music, since I was in youth group and a good little Christian girl, I listened to exclusively Christian music. I don't think it was forced upon me, but I did love it for a really long time. Everyone from Amy Grant, to Michael W. Smith, Point of Grace, Rich Mullins, DC Talk (which was the more edgier of groups), all the way up to Jennifer Knapp. She was the first female solo artist who had a rawness to her voice. A realness to her lyrics. They came out of pain and longing to understand God and longing to understand how he could love us. She was the first person I felt truly said it how it really was. She wasn't a syrupy sweet "God loves you" artist. She got down to the root, to the dirt and the mud and the muck. I also loved her look. Back then you would only know what an artist looked like by what was in the CD cover and what they wore in concert. Internet wasn't this big thing you could search endless pictures on. I remember her long straight hair on her Lay it Down album, and how she wore big black combat boots in concert and didn't look like your average Christian female artist. And I liked that. I liked it a lot. She quickly became my favorite. I took her first album with me to college and soon others came out, while I was still in college, 2 more actually. I swear she got me through those years. When I was in a dark place after my first shot at love was ripped from me like a baby from a womb (sorry for the intense picture, but it really was that intense to me at the time) I would lay in bed and listen to her prayers to God that were crying out in desperation and I would cry out both literally and figuratively for God to help me as well. When I became a leader in a Baptist Student Ministry group, I used her song Faithful to Me in a teaching lesson, when I had to do the unthinkable and stand up before a large group of Freshman and teach a Bible lesson. I was a Sophomore and I couldn't tell you what I said, but I definitely remember using that song. That song, like many more, also proved as a comfort in times of great need and great despair; as a way of calling out to God to rescue me or love me or whatever I needed. I remember crying in my dorm room bed as I sang out these words from Refine Me: " Lord, come with your fire, burn my desires, refine me. Lord, my will has deceived me, please come and free me, come rescue this child, for I long to be reconciled to you." These "desires" I spoke of, were the desires of most college-age girls: to be loved by a guy. To be loved in a physical and intimate way. I didn't like being the only 18 year old who hadn't even been kissed yet. All my friends had and I felt like a loser. But I also knew that those desires were getting in the way of me fully knowing and honoring God and all that jazz. Stuff I cared about back then. I just wanted to be like everyone else. I wanted a boyfriend. And then when that boyfriend came summer after freshman year and then was gone by the summer after sophomore year, that song still rang true, but even more deeply. I had had a taste of that love that dare not speak it's name and I was in mourning for it's loss and wanted it burned away because it wasn't doing anything but punishing me and making me feel like I couldn't live without it. (Just as a side note, we were still good Christian kids who were both raised on the "True love waits" bandwagon, that was a part of every youth group in Texas in the 1990s, so we didn't have actual intercourse and we'll just leave it at that). I don't even know what Jennifer Knapp was referencing in that line about desires, but that's what it was for me. I loved every one of her songs, I couldn't get enough. A group of us in college went and saw her with Third Day in concert in Austin. She was the coolest of the cool. At least she was to me. She was like the Joan Jett of Christian music. She was definitely my favorite artist. And then just like that she was gone. I saw her many times in college, the last one being my Senior year in 2003, at a concert in Belton, Texas at Mary Hardin-Baylor. She seemed off that night. She seemed sad. It wasn't too long after that, that she was gone. Dropped off the face of the Earth. I remember reading a rumor that she was a lesbian and that's why she left Christian music, but to me that was neither here nor there. That didn't matter to me at all. I was years from my own revelation and I knew absolutely 0 lesbians. I had hear that Ellen DeGeneres had come out on her TV show, but that was literally my experience with lesbians and this was all the way through college and even for a few years after before I had even met or known for a fact that someone was a lesbian. I was too busy trying desperately to play catch up with all my friends, while one-by-one they were being picked off, as if getting married was the equivalent of being taken out by a sharp shooter. It kind of felt that way to me. I felt alone, like I was the only single girl left on the planet. I was so tunnel vision, that I didn't truly know the real me and what I wanted. I just knew I wanted whatever all my friends had. I wanted to be normal. I didn't want to be the only one left without a husband, while they all bypassed me already on lap 20 while I was on lap 2. (lap 20 being on child number 3 or 4). Well all that happened anyway, there's no stopping life. I've already told my coming out story back in the blog titled "This is Me" back in February of 2013, so I won't go through it again. Things had started rolling that previous May, but that's when I finally revealed it to the internet world and to anyone who read my blog (who I am discovering is more people than I ever thought would possibly read it). When Jennifer came back and came out, it didn't really affect me. Her coming out didn't "matter" to me at the time. It wasn't that I didn't care. It was more like to me, it was a non-issue. Love is love and that's how I've always thought of it. I wasn't taught anything on the subject, something like that would've never been discussed at my house and I don't remember my church having an opinion on it, but then again I was usually writing on the sides of the church bulletin and not listening all that well to the Pastor. I had just decided it for myself. That it wasn't wrong or bad. Love is love. I was just glad she had come out of hiding to sing again. I had missed her. She played a little show at the end of 2009 at the House of Blues in Dallas. I remember standing front and center, totally mesmerized and on cloud 9 because I couldn't believe she was actually back and standing in front of me, singing again. She wasn't out to the world yet at that particular moment. Not long after that show I heard she had come out in an interview with Larry King. I thought she was incredibly brave. I knew the Christian music world would not welcome her back with open arms, but I knew that she would have plenty of fans still. I don't think she knew it at the time, but there were a lot of closeted lesbians in the church world that had grown up going to her concerts and loving her music. I think we felt a connection to her, before we even knew what that connection was. I guess I can't speak for everyone, but I do know for a fact it wasn't just me. She was out in 2010 and I was still 2 years away from my own self-discovery and trip down the coming-out lane. Her album Letting Go was worth the 7 year hiatus. It was incredible. The cover picture alone says it all. A wild-haired Jen, just letting it all go, arms out, yelling to the skies. I love it. To hear her honest words about herself and the journey she's been on all those years, it's a rare treat to the ears, to hear raw emotions and truth. But yet it wasn't done in a "mad at the world" kind of way. It was done right. I remember going back to the album a few years later, when I was going through my own self-discovery and honesty truths. It gave me the courage to Dive in, as the first song on the album says. "I'm so tired of standing on the edge of myself. You know I'm longing for it, to dive in, dive in." I needed to dive in to my own life, and not the life that I thought I was supposed to have, because it was what everyone I knew had and what the church told me was the life I should have. I was ready to dive in to my own life and I did. I won't say I drowned, but I treaded water as long as I could and now I'm currently out of the pool only dipping my toes in. But I've been in the toddler's wading area and I've been in the part where the water's up to your mid-section, so I'm doing the best I can. You can only stay in the water for so long before you get all wrinkly and need to get out and be wrapped in a warm towel and take some me-time, alone time, to gather up your thoughts and plans for your next swimming outing. Hope everyone followed that metaphor. I think it started out as diving into your life and ended up diving into the world of dating. One I was terrible at with the guys and am pretty awful at with the girls as well. Oh well. It is what it is.
Back on track now. So enough backstory. So, JK (you can figure that out) had a new album to be released called Set me Free. And she got the help from her fans to buy different things like VIP meet and greets and merchandise and even her very own boots. The money went to help fund her newest album. So this was like over a year ago because her album came out in 2014. I bought a VIP Ticket, and I finally got to use it last night when she was in town. I thought I would get to shake her hand, snap a pic and be on my way. I mean this is what I know of how most artists meet their fans. This is how I met Joshua Radin (my favorite male artist) and Kristin Chenoweth (my favorite person in the world). They were still amazing moments and definitely hold high spots for "best moments ever," but Jen moved right up in there, last night.
After I found her tour manager, she whisked me inside like I was some rich and powerful woman who dare not wait in lines. Within seconds, I was in the back room of Poor David's Pub, where the artists hang out before a show. And there she was- Jennifer freaking Knapp. I felt like I reverted back to that 18 year old girl, shy and not quite sure how to speak to people. The room was like something out of a movie. Like when they have bands touring these clubs and the room has a really old couch that has seen better days and just a collage of randomness on every inch of the wall; other artists pictures, that kind of think. Jen joked that at least this room didn't have penises drawn on the wall, and I laughed and took a breath. First off she was a lot shorter than I thought she was. It's funny when you see someone on stage so many times, but you have no comparison as to how tall they really are. She was very friendly and personable. She made me feel at ease, which says a lot about her. My favorite moment was when she asked if I was an introvert or extrovert and when I said introvert, she said excitedly- me too! And high-fived me. That was the moment that took this amazing moment and put it into the "best moments ever" category. Just the fact that she really talked to me and didn't just take a picture with me and send me on my way, meant the world to me. I started to talk about how much her music meant to me and gave her a card with which I had written on both sides of and even somewhat awkwardly showed her my mountain tattoo and mentioned living in Colorado. She had to go for a sound check but promised we'd meet back up after the show, which I couldn't believe she would take more of her time to talk to me. I was in heaven. I didn't realize until I sat down in the front and center seat of that tiny little pub, that I had forgotten to get a picture with her, which would've been a selfie since we were the only ones in the room, so I was glad that we were going to get to talk a little more afterwards. After the show (which was of course amazing; just Jen and her guitar and her mighty mighty voice) I was whisked back again. This time her tour manager was back there handling the money with some old guy with a really long white beard that ran the place. She still tried to talk to me, while getting ready to go back out and meet some fans who were gathering around the merchandise table waiting for an autograph. Me being the weirdo I am, felt too awkward to say what I really wanted to say, not in front of other people. I am a one-on-one gal and that's all there is to it. They weren't even paying attention to us, but still. I wanted to shout out- "I'm a lesbian too Jen!" But I couldn't. It didn't make sense for me to just say that out of the blue. But later on I laughed at myself, because Jennifer had told a story during the concert that night about how some famous musician was staying in her hotel and how she was too afraid to go up to him and how she never does with artists she admires. She was like what would I say?? "I play guitar too!" So yeah. Jen gets it. If she reads my card, she'll know about me. I didn't spell it out, but it was definitely made obvious.
So that's the tale of when another "best moment of my life" was added to the already pretty short list. I did get that picture with her, which I'm sure I will put in a picture frame. Not that I will ever forget it. You don't forget those "best moments." You carry them around like treasures you've picked up along the way. You pull them out and you look at them with pride and joy and happiness and you remind yourself that, see?? These moments happened! And they can still happen! You never know when the next 'best moment' will happen. It might be years away, but it is definitely worth the wait.
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