Facing the Music: My Story

by Jennifer Knapp

I would imagine what peace looked like when I would come home tomorrow and will it to be so.

I ached for grace, for ease.

I was learning that these experiences did not have to stay locked inside my head, eroding my spirit. I was learning new ways to survive.

None of us are at the end of what we experience. It may feel like we are at times the target of sorrow or of anger, but these things must pass through us if we want to survive them. We cannot keep joy to ourselves or love hidden away.

Nor can we harbor

pain so deep that it takes root. We can set the love we have inside our hearts free to be enjoyed by those we hold dear. We have in us the power to reshape the a...

All that time, being a part of and witnessing the spiritual impact of music during the weddings, funerals, and High Church ceremonies filled me with a growing sense of reverence for Divinity.

The idea of calling that sensation by a name—to call it “God” aloud to others—was too provocative for me, but it didn’t keep my spirit from drifting into it.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has passed, the new has come. —2 Corinthians 5:17

Part of my own personal path to recovery was found in the words of Jesus. There wasn’t a single soul he met—prostitute, adulterer, or murderer—that he could not forgive. While others mocked the fallen and demanded retribution, his way was to love at the moment of greatest need.

believed that no matter who we are, who we love, it is how we love that matters.