Song Stories: Bitter Waters

So I thought it might be nice (even if maybe over-explanatory) to take some time and use up some of the infinite interweb real estate to share a little bit about where the songs from the new album came from.  You can click the linky-link below to listen, and scroll on down to read the lyrics -- because, well, that's where my heart tends to show up and where most of that fun angst lives.  :)

<Listen here on Reverb Nation>

Bitter Waters . . . It’s really not pretty.

This song ended up being an amalgam of several different people and relationships.  Maybe it’s because I’m a naturally difficult person (surely it’s not that), but I have plenty of bitter waters flowing through my heart from which to choose.  And, for most of us, I think, sorting honestly through the often grotesque and seemingly impossible stuff of community can really take some doing. 

Initially, it started as an “I have this friend” story.  Yes, of course, I was being petty, but that's just where it began.  This longtime friend and I are such totally different personalities that at times we grate on one another a bit.  On top of that, I tend to not be very good at friendship maintenance.  Praying and crying through some of those interactions, through my own selfish anger, was the spring board for the whole song. 

So I decided to hit the couch for my self-Dr.-Phil-ification.  Once I finally put a name to what I was feeling – bitterness – other people and events from my life began to come into focus.  Too many times, I had cut and run when lines of communication became strained.  It was just easier to get mad, justify my mad and stay that way.  Man, relationships and expectations and jealousy and flat out apathy completely wreck a friendship, a community, even our whole stinking world. 

Bitter waters start to flow – from your heart to mine and back again.

But underneath the ugly, deep down beneath the broken, there is a kind of honest acceptance and compassion that is truly life-giving, and it’s just waiting there to be discovered.  It’s the kind of love that restores a person’s self-value, reaffirms their humanity.  It’s the kind of love that can save a soul.

And it does.  It saves our souls. 

But it is so hard.  Agreed?

Too often I need to remind myself to put down the shovel – stop taking the surface-level, easier, mechanical way to repair – and do the work.  Get to digging until your hands are bloody, plunged deep beneath the pain and spite to the underlying waters of truth and unconditional affection.  It’s there, but you have to really want it to get to it.  And it’s worth it. 

So the moral of the story is:  If you love someone, don’t stop digging.

Bitter Waters 

I know you see me with my eyes wide open
How I stare right through you when you talk to me
To even fields you return the gesture
And we both wonder how this could have come to be
 

A smile across our hearts but drinking deeply from the bitter waters

They trickle down from our expectations
Of where this relationship should be today
They’re rising up even though unbidden
In the cold poison hidden in the words we say

If we don’t crack this open, I think we both may drown in the bitter waters

Bitter waters . . . they drain me dry

But here comes the rain, the precious rain, falling down
Christening a calm upon this place
 And in the rain, the hallowed rain
Just a taste of grace, to purify this place

Put down the shovel ‘cause the axe we bury
Demands the bloody earth underneath our nails
A digging down through the grudge we carry
To the sweet spring where we see that love prevails

It’s that necessary pain that overcomes this tide

The bitter waters . . . they drain me dry

Copyright Jennifer Hildebrand 2015