I’ve loved your music for many years, it’s been a source of great encouragement to me. I’ve found great comfort in the lyrics that I sing to God as a mighty protector, lover of my soul and omnipotent God. Praying you find your way back the one true God and savior Jesus who I believe you knew and loved. He is always present on your life longing to love you knowing YOU through and through. God is the only one who can truly heal you.
I mourn for you, Audrey. All I can say is that the "god" you experienced in the Catholic church and in the CCM industry is not Our Creator. Your faith was manipulated for profit and your emotions twisted for corporate gain. Life is full of meaning, and there is greater purpose outside of doing whatever whim you feel, which due to the vastness of subjectivity, will ultimately will lead to a world of pain and chaos. Satan is a great deceiver and personal PRIDE and unilateral self-centered expression is one of the deepest deceptions. I pray and hope you will discover Jesus Christ for who He truly is and find your hope, faith, love, peace, and comfort in Him! Blessings, my sister.
Thank you for sharing your story so honestly. Your story is so needed, and it is enough. I commend you for your bravery and creativity. Your music and your writing have inspired me throughout my own faith transitions. Peace and healing!
I love this so much. I recently discovered your 2016 Inheritance album (fantastic) and thought I'd look you up and see what you were all about. Found your substack, found this post, and deeply relate as someone who has been on a similar journey of heavy deconstruction and the grief/freedom (flow mingled down) that results. My best to you on your journey toward health and wholeness - from someone who also lives with a CPTSD diagnosis because of a spiritually/emotionally traumatic upbringing.
Precious Audrey. I have listened & followed your amazing voice, tone and manner of singing for a long while, since "Restless". My kids were in Faith Formation and HS age. They told me how the entire group maybe 75 stopped everything after coming back from a conference to listen to "Restless". I was a leader for a praying/adoring group for a few years after that; your deep and profound music was always part of my song list. I placed it often times during deeper prayer. Your stepping away, not to cause you pain, just being honest, brought many of us to tears. Myself especially. As a mom of 6- all over 26 years now, I was afraid. I am often told how ferociously I love... very protective. So, I cried for you. I have almost everyday prayed for you since then- I lift you up to the Father for healing. I am a spiritual director, by training and God has allowed me some gifts in that regard and along those lines I pray for you. We are in the mountains of WNC on a beautiful tract with streams. I have often thought of having you and your children come for some days to just "be". It seems to me that you are highly intelligent and for that reason I was a bit intimidated to ask, but I have a son in seminary who is a Thomist. He is a voracious reader and studier, and is giving his life to the Lord. I have wondered if some conversations with him might offer you some insight?
We all want you at peace, Audrey, and for me..... I have heard stories of great pain and trauma, have one I lived myself, but at the end of the day it boils down to identity. That seems to be the stumbling block for many. Identity. We are His. That's why He stooped and became man to come and tell us in person.
We haven't forgotten about you Audrey, nor has He.
Someone walking a different path, esp in regards to faith, does not mean they are lost...and I think this is the premise of all she has been walking through because of what we are/we taught as devoted Catholics and Christians. As a devoted Catholic who was in ministry for 15 years and dedicated my life to this area of living and was extremely plugged into FSU and the Catholic world, I have now walked a similar path. I feel its very hurtful when you try to speak your truth and people shed pitty your way with these types of responses. Mary, with so much love, those of use continuing on our journey are not lost souls needing saving. The opposite is the very notion of what finally set so many of us free.
Yes we feel really free when they stop serving God. And yes anyone can have that freedom at any moment any time they wish, which is why there is nothing special about it. Of course there is a certain lack of freedom that comes with making yourself a slave to Christ. We can do either. It is against God's nature to coerce, the choice is ours. But, the painful (and perhaps miserable) life of the person who serves God is more beautiful than the life of the one who goes their own way. Why is this? I do not know, this is just the way it is. Christ is beautiful. His life and service, painful and miserable as it was, was the embodiment of beauty.
I was going to say something similar to C. Your show in 2013 here got snowed out. It was rescheduled for my birthday, but we had Bradley childbirth class for our first child, so I gave the tickets to a coworker's wife.
A few years later, you had another concert near me, the day before my birthday, I think. I took my then-two-and-a-half-year-old and then-three-month-old. We loved it (okay, the baby was just happy to be, as she always was) but I could sense that part of your heart wasn't in it.
I can't decide how I feel about where you are, and I think that that's in large part because I shouldn't. It's not my place to decide. I am sorry for your pain, your confusion, and your burnout. I still find so much value in your Christian music. My girls have been requesting it more recently in the car. As a writer (and a musician-ish. Not remotely professional or even close. I plink out things on the piano and sing in the car and at Mass on Sundays, not with choir anymore because I don't have the vocal stamina), I can understand having made things that people appreciate but that feel like they were made by someone who used to be me but isn't me anymore, so I hope that it means something good for you that people still appreciate things you've made when you were at a different place, and that it isn't yucky for you. I appreciate being able to read about this journey you've been on.
G*d loves you unconditionally and so do I. Whatever and whoever you choose to be, you are a most beautiful thing, as we all are. Be confident in your choices. You have made those choices because you could not do otherwise. You honor your creator, with everyday you live. Subscribing to a narrow, judgemental and oversimplified version of faith does not suit you. You are not lost, but have come home!
Still praying for you Audrey. As Michael Card wrote: "Wand'ring in the wilderness is the best place to be found..." I pray you allow yourself to be found by Jesus, and that the Lover of your soul would once again become your soul's True Love.
My name is Robert Stempkowski. I'm 62, and a man who's gone more than a few rounds with God. He's given me an instrument, too. Like you, I've struggled with believing what I'm meant to do with it. Still, I can't deny the gift, which I've used to to a middling degree of professional success (as a restaurant critic, a sports writer, and even a greeting card industry poet, of all things!)
Now I have this story I've contracted to tell through a Christian publisher (TBN/Trilogy). It's the hardest thing I've ever committed to writing in my life. Those who've read or heard parts of the story tell me it's something. To me, it's just my story. So, reading your words to that general effect here helps me. Until today, I knew nothing more about Audrey Assad than the music. Now, knowing a little more of your ongoing story helps me with the one I'm about to tell and put out there to the degree I can.
As sure as God made you- in part- to sing, he made me a writer with a story of His to transcribe. Have you ever felt more the brush than the artist, Audrey? I'm less the Author than His pencil. Yet what a blessing it feels to me to be just that in the Hand of the Author of everything.
I've heard Heaven's hand in your songwriting, Ms. Assad. Take it from a man who's been called out on the carpet by the Big Guy Himself: His Holy Spirit speaks through what you do. After all,.like any Masterpiece, the Master's Hand is rendered apparent more by the stroke of His brush than the evidence of His signature.
I've loved listening to you, Audrey Assad. May God allow His great gift to you to keep singing in my ears. In Jesus' Name, Amen.
I know I'm late to this blog post. A good bit late. Here's my question: how did a "flirting" with Nihilism in 2015 and then full embracing it in 2018 impact Inheritance and Evergreen? Certainly, there are notes of "doubt" in Evergreen. But to hear that you would describe yourself in 2018 as a full Nihilist...and then to listen to Evergreen. Something feels off. How do you view those two albums from here?
So, Evergreen was recorded in 2017 and prior. I released it in 2018, because that's often how album cycles work. "Unfolding" provides a good glimpse into where my mindset was heading at the time...and the entire album is full of songs that were my attempt to kind of hold on to faith in a time where it was slipping through my hands more rapidly than even I was comfortable with. When I recorded Inheritance I was already struggling to hold onto it. In fact, I remember that I partially had the idea to record Inheritance in the first place because I couldn't write a worship song to save my life at the time.
It was right around the time that Evergreen was released that I fully let myself slip into feeling out what it would mean if all my deepest fears about meaning and reality were true. As I detailed a bit in my post, my journey has shifted from there. But I think I needed to just kind of...let the wave of unbelief come over me fully.
Hi Audrey! Thank you for your authenticity. Just wanted to suggest a book to take along your journey: The Skeletons in God’s Closet by Joshua Ryan Butler. I have no affiliation with the book- in fact I’ve been reading and listening to it for free via the public library apps. It’s about hell and how the traditional view of the literal torture chamber is not what God intended. So glad you are finding your way out of burn out and inspiring and mentoring other artists!
I was thinking the same thing -- try Josh Butler's book Skeletons in God's Closet -- to get a different, outside the box perspective on hell. It's not the hell as conventionally preached. Butler shares great insights and gets bullied for that by the "cool kids" who run religion.
If you’re so into music, I suggest you listen to some good old school hip-hop, or anything from Strange Music (Kansas City).
Tech N9NE just came out with a new single called “Tell Everybody.” I like it. You’re a mum so you get respect from us.
TBH, the reason I don’t like most contemporary “Christian Music,” is because it sounds…inauthentic. Or worse, it comes off as describing a kind of homoerotic relationship between Jesus and the listener (Me). Me being male…I never really liked it. Jesus of Nazareth, God the Son, is my brother, Prince, and King…so the modern stuff always seemed “off” to me.
Then again, i already went through the drugs, psychedelics, and psychwards…so my perspective is different, and we all have the choice to do what we want.
I took my two little girls to see your concert at the University of Dallas in September 2013. My girls were 12 and 10 at the time, and they LOVED your music (especially my younger daughter). During the concert, I felt deep-down that there may have been a disconnect between the message you were sending to the audience and the real you. You arrived on stage, sang the new album in order from the first track to the last track, and walked off stage. Although the venue was a smaller, more intimate setting, there was very little interaction with the audience, and you just seemed sad or lost. I’d never had that experience at any concert I’d ever attended. I believed you may have been pregnant at the time, so I attributed the “sadness” to pregnancy hormones. My girls thoroughly enjoyed the music from the front row. I’m sure they were in awe to be so close to a performer they loved so much. They sang along with you and couldn’t take their eyes off you. I enjoyed the music as well, but I left that evening wondering why you seemed so disconnected from the experience. Maybe it was the pregnancy hormones, or maybe the “beginning of the end” was already in motion. I don’t know. We still listen to those early albums. Those lyrics still speak to us. It’s all just as good now as it was then, and in my opinion, yes, you could’ve been a star in the Christian music industry. But, a person’s happiness and peace of mind is worth something. I am truly glad that you are working on your own happiness and your own peace of mind. You’re worth it. Wishing you all the best, Audrey. ❤️
I’ve loved your music for many years, it’s been a source of great encouragement to me. I’ve found great comfort in the lyrics that I sing to God as a mighty protector, lover of my soul and omnipotent God. Praying you find your way back the one true God and savior Jesus who I believe you knew and loved. He is always present on your life longing to love you knowing YOU through and through. God is the only one who can truly heal you.
I mourn for you, Audrey. All I can say is that the "god" you experienced in the Catholic church and in the CCM industry is not Our Creator. Your faith was manipulated for profit and your emotions twisted for corporate gain. Life is full of meaning, and there is greater purpose outside of doing whatever whim you feel, which due to the vastness of subjectivity, will ultimately will lead to a world of pain and chaos. Satan is a great deceiver and personal PRIDE and unilateral self-centered expression is one of the deepest deceptions. I pray and hope you will discover Jesus Christ for who He truly is and find your hope, faith, love, peace, and comfort in Him! Blessings, my sister.
Thank you for sharing your story so honestly. Your story is so needed, and it is enough. I commend you for your bravery and creativity. Your music and your writing have inspired me throughout my own faith transitions. Peace and healing!
I love this so much. I recently discovered your 2016 Inheritance album (fantastic) and thought I'd look you up and see what you were all about. Found your substack, found this post, and deeply relate as someone who has been on a similar journey of heavy deconstruction and the grief/freedom (flow mingled down) that results. My best to you on your journey toward health and wholeness - from someone who also lives with a CPTSD diagnosis because of a spiritually/emotionally traumatic upbringing.
This is what the entertain business does, crushes souls.
Precious Audrey. I have listened & followed your amazing voice, tone and manner of singing for a long while, since "Restless". My kids were in Faith Formation and HS age. They told me how the entire group maybe 75 stopped everything after coming back from a conference to listen to "Restless". I was a leader for a praying/adoring group for a few years after that; your deep and profound music was always part of my song list. I placed it often times during deeper prayer. Your stepping away, not to cause you pain, just being honest, brought many of us to tears. Myself especially. As a mom of 6- all over 26 years now, I was afraid. I am often told how ferociously I love... very protective. So, I cried for you. I have almost everyday prayed for you since then- I lift you up to the Father for healing. I am a spiritual director, by training and God has allowed me some gifts in that regard and along those lines I pray for you. We are in the mountains of WNC on a beautiful tract with streams. I have often thought of having you and your children come for some days to just "be". It seems to me that you are highly intelligent and for that reason I was a bit intimidated to ask, but I have a son in seminary who is a Thomist. He is a voracious reader and studier, and is giving his life to the Lord. I have wondered if some conversations with him might offer you some insight?
We all want you at peace, Audrey, and for me..... I have heard stories of great pain and trauma, have one I lived myself, but at the end of the day it boils down to identity. That seems to be the stumbling block for many. Identity. We are His. That's why He stooped and became man to come and tell us in person.
We haven't forgotten about you Audrey, nor has He.
Someone walking a different path, esp in regards to faith, does not mean they are lost...and I think this is the premise of all she has been walking through because of what we are/we taught as devoted Catholics and Christians. As a devoted Catholic who was in ministry for 15 years and dedicated my life to this area of living and was extremely plugged into FSU and the Catholic world, I have now walked a similar path. I feel its very hurtful when you try to speak your truth and people shed pitty your way with these types of responses. Mary, with so much love, those of use continuing on our journey are not lost souls needing saving. The opposite is the very notion of what finally set so many of us free.
Yes we feel really free when they stop serving God. And yes anyone can have that freedom at any moment any time they wish, which is why there is nothing special about it. Of course there is a certain lack of freedom that comes with making yourself a slave to Christ. We can do either. It is against God's nature to coerce, the choice is ours. But, the painful (and perhaps miserable) life of the person who serves God is more beautiful than the life of the one who goes their own way. Why is this? I do not know, this is just the way it is. Christ is beautiful. His life and service, painful and miserable as it was, was the embodiment of beauty.
I was going to say something similar to C. Your show in 2013 here got snowed out. It was rescheduled for my birthday, but we had Bradley childbirth class for our first child, so I gave the tickets to a coworker's wife.
A few years later, you had another concert near me, the day before my birthday, I think. I took my then-two-and-a-half-year-old and then-three-month-old. We loved it (okay, the baby was just happy to be, as she always was) but I could sense that part of your heart wasn't in it.
I can't decide how I feel about where you are, and I think that that's in large part because I shouldn't. It's not my place to decide. I am sorry for your pain, your confusion, and your burnout. I still find so much value in your Christian music. My girls have been requesting it more recently in the car. As a writer (and a musician-ish. Not remotely professional or even close. I plink out things on the piano and sing in the car and at Mass on Sundays, not with choir anymore because I don't have the vocal stamina), I can understand having made things that people appreciate but that feel like they were made by someone who used to be me but isn't me anymore, so I hope that it means something good for you that people still appreciate things you've made when you were at a different place, and that it isn't yucky for you. I appreciate being able to read about this journey you've been on.
G*d loves you unconditionally and so do I. Whatever and whoever you choose to be, you are a most beautiful thing, as we all are. Be confident in your choices. You have made those choices because you could not do otherwise. You honor your creator, with everyday you live. Subscribing to a narrow, judgemental and oversimplified version of faith does not suit you. You are not lost, but have come home!
Was there ever a part 2?
Still praying for you Audrey. As Michael Card wrote: "Wand'ring in the wilderness is the best place to be found..." I pray you allow yourself to be found by Jesus, and that the Lover of your soul would once again become your soul's True Love.
My name is Robert Stempkowski. I'm 62, and a man who's gone more than a few rounds with God. He's given me an instrument, too. Like you, I've struggled with believing what I'm meant to do with it. Still, I can't deny the gift, which I've used to to a middling degree of professional success (as a restaurant critic, a sports writer, and even a greeting card industry poet, of all things!)
Now I have this story I've contracted to tell through a Christian publisher (TBN/Trilogy). It's the hardest thing I've ever committed to writing in my life. Those who've read or heard parts of the story tell me it's something. To me, it's just my story. So, reading your words to that general effect here helps me. Until today, I knew nothing more about Audrey Assad than the music. Now, knowing a little more of your ongoing story helps me with the one I'm about to tell and put out there to the degree I can.
As sure as God made you- in part- to sing, he made me a writer with a story of His to transcribe. Have you ever felt more the brush than the artist, Audrey? I'm less the Author than His pencil. Yet what a blessing it feels to me to be just that in the Hand of the Author of everything.
I've heard Heaven's hand in your songwriting, Ms. Assad. Take it from a man who's been called out on the carpet by the Big Guy Himself: His Holy Spirit speaks through what you do. After all,.like any Masterpiece, the Master's Hand is rendered apparent more by the stroke of His brush than the evidence of His signature.
I've loved listening to you, Audrey Assad. May God allow His great gift to you to keep singing in my ears. In Jesus' Name, Amen.
I know I'm late to this blog post. A good bit late. Here's my question: how did a "flirting" with Nihilism in 2015 and then full embracing it in 2018 impact Inheritance and Evergreen? Certainly, there are notes of "doubt" in Evergreen. But to hear that you would describe yourself in 2018 as a full Nihilist...and then to listen to Evergreen. Something feels off. How do you view those two albums from here?
thanks for your question! It's a really good one.
So, Evergreen was recorded in 2017 and prior. I released it in 2018, because that's often how album cycles work. "Unfolding" provides a good glimpse into where my mindset was heading at the time...and the entire album is full of songs that were my attempt to kind of hold on to faith in a time where it was slipping through my hands more rapidly than even I was comfortable with. When I recorded Inheritance I was already struggling to hold onto it. In fact, I remember that I partially had the idea to record Inheritance in the first place because I couldn't write a worship song to save my life at the time.
It was right around the time that Evergreen was released that I fully let myself slip into feeling out what it would mean if all my deepest fears about meaning and reality were true. As I detailed a bit in my post, my journey has shifted from there. But I think I needed to just kind of...let the wave of unbelief come over me fully.
Hi Audrey! Thank you for your authenticity. Just wanted to suggest a book to take along your journey: The Skeletons in God’s Closet by Joshua Ryan Butler. I have no affiliation with the book- in fact I’ve been reading and listening to it for free via the public library apps. It’s about hell and how the traditional view of the literal torture chamber is not what God intended. So glad you are finding your way out of burn out and inspiring and mentoring other artists!
I was thinking the same thing -- try Josh Butler's book Skeletons in God's Closet -- to get a different, outside the box perspective on hell. It's not the hell as conventionally preached. Butler shares great insights and gets bullied for that by the "cool kids" who run religion.
If you’re so into music, I suggest you listen to some good old school hip-hop, or anything from Strange Music (Kansas City).
Tech N9NE just came out with a new single called “Tell Everybody.” I like it. You’re a mum so you get respect from us.
TBH, the reason I don’t like most contemporary “Christian Music,” is because it sounds…inauthentic. Or worse, it comes off as describing a kind of homoerotic relationship between Jesus and the listener (Me). Me being male…I never really liked it. Jesus of Nazareth, God the Son, is my brother, Prince, and King…so the modern stuff always seemed “off” to me.
Then again, i already went through the drugs, psychedelics, and psychwards…so my perspective is different, and we all have the choice to do what we want.
The "See You Soon" cover is spectacular! Wow! Can't wait to hear more.
I took my two little girls to see your concert at the University of Dallas in September 2013. My girls were 12 and 10 at the time, and they LOVED your music (especially my younger daughter). During the concert, I felt deep-down that there may have been a disconnect between the message you were sending to the audience and the real you. You arrived on stage, sang the new album in order from the first track to the last track, and walked off stage. Although the venue was a smaller, more intimate setting, there was very little interaction with the audience, and you just seemed sad or lost. I’d never had that experience at any concert I’d ever attended. I believed you may have been pregnant at the time, so I attributed the “sadness” to pregnancy hormones. My girls thoroughly enjoyed the music from the front row. I’m sure they were in awe to be so close to a performer they loved so much. They sang along with you and couldn’t take their eyes off you. I enjoyed the music as well, but I left that evening wondering why you seemed so disconnected from the experience. Maybe it was the pregnancy hormones, or maybe the “beginning of the end” was already in motion. I don’t know. We still listen to those early albums. Those lyrics still speak to us. It’s all just as good now as it was then, and in my opinion, yes, you could’ve been a star in the Christian music industry. But, a person’s happiness and peace of mind is worth something. I am truly glad that you are working on your own happiness and your own peace of mind. You’re worth it. Wishing you all the best, Audrey. ❤️