New Release! "Forged" - Come and see

Come listen and see.

I’m releasing a new song called “Forged" today. This one came from a season I lived through and didn’t understand until much later.

The idea behind the song is drawn from how Damascus steel is made. Not toughness for toughness’ sake, but a kind of endurance. Steel doesn’t become strong because it survives heat once. It becomes strong because it is heated, folded, struck, cooled, and then put back into the fire again (My popps knows some really cool, even deeper metaphors here). Often after it already looks finished, it still goes in, over and over. The strength is built in layers you can’t see yet.

That process mirrors something I’ve lived.

There was a time in my life when things were going well. We had bought a house. Work was steady. I thought I had finally found my footing. Then the market turned fast. My employer started having problems. Bills stacked up. Property taxes jumped overnight because the house was new construction. Payments that once felt manageable suddenly weren’t.

I started working construction on Saturdays with a guy from church just to keep up. I did whatever I could to make it work. Eventually we tried to sell the house and couldn’t because values had dropped so much. In the end, we sold anyway, took the loss, and moved into my brother’s attic in Utah.

That felt like being split in two.

On the last day in that house, I went back to lock the doors one final time. I was standing in the garage, trying to keep it together, when a small bird flew in and couldn’t find its way back out. In that moment, my stress disappeared. I stopped thinking about the loss and focused on helping this tiny thing find its way. It was small, almost insignificant, but it was enough to remind me that I wasn’t alone. That God was still there. That this wasn’t the end of the story, even if it felt like one.

That moment never left me.

“Forged” came out of that realization. That sometimes the breaking is not a punishment. It’s part of this process got has, and man it can be brutal. That what feels like loss is often knowledge we couldn’t get any other way. Faith is sometimes learned by staying under the hammer long enough to trust the hands holding it.

This song written about learning to endure the work. The scorching heat and pressure that often accompanies it. Often its like starting over and believing that God knows what will last long before we do.

I’m sharing this song because it matters to me. It will be a record of something real, at least for my kids to give a crap about someday. If you’ve ever thought you were finished, only to find yourself tested again, this one is for you.

This will be uploaded this evening to this website and should hit Spotify and Apple Music later tomorrow.

Thanks for being here.

Shane