Get to Know Her: 2017 Retreat Worship Leader

I feel so humbled and honored to be leading worship for the Hope Mommies retreat this spring. I know this will be a sacred time and a sacred space. To be invited into your suffering and loss, and to worship with you in the midst of that loss, is a privilege I do not take lightly. The Hope Mommies leadership asked me to introduce myself to you, so I wanted to share with you a bit of my story. And I am looking forward to getting to know each of you too.

If you look me up on Instagram, you’ll see this line in my profile: “Mom. Wife. Song writer. Song singer. Telling the Story.” And I think that’s a pretty good description of what my life looks like these days, and of what gets me excited. I am so thankful to be the mom of three sweet and wild kids—Ellie (6), Harrison (4) and Libby (a feisty 2)—and to be married to my husband Nick. Songwriting is something I absolutely love to do. But Instagram doesn’t really allow for me to fit in all the messy stuff: the way I struggle with finding my identity in Christ and not in my performance as a mom or a wife or a musician, or the way transitions really bring out my sin (and how there’s been a lot of that in the past few years), or the seasons of doubt, darkness, and even anger with God. And this is why I love using music (and hopefully my life) to tell His Story. Because it’s His Story and the hope I find in it that anchors me in the messy, everyday stuff of life, and in the hardest trials.

My journey with music started way, way back when I was a junior in high school, after I had gone out on a date with a guy named David. On our date, David played me a song that he had written. My mom had taught me a few chords on the guitar just that year, and I found myself sitting there listening to David and thinking, “Hey, I could maybe do that too!” As I remember it, I went home and wrote a song that very night. It didn’t end up working out with David, but that was the beginning of me falling in love with songwriting. I just kept on writing and writing from there.

Around the same time, God really chased after my heart and opened my eyes to what it looked like to follow Him. I especially loved studying His Word, and sharing with others the stories found in it. I didn’t know it at the time, but God would eventually join together these two growing passions: my love for His Story in Scripture and my love for writing songs. It’s really these two things that define my heart behind all of the music I do today.

Just before I turned thirty, I realized that my birthday landed on 11/11/11. I thought, “Hmmmm…. that’s a cool date and 30 is a big birthday, I should do something cool!” I ended up giving myself a crazy goal of writing a song from every book of the Bible that year, by 11/11/11. It turned into quite the undertaking, but it was amazing to spend the year digging into the stories of Scripture and trying to turn them into songs. Each week, I would really immerse myself in a particular passage. I would try to connect not just with the truths from the passage, but the feel of the passage—the  smells, the sounds, the context, the emotion of the characters. In this headspace, I’d sit down with my guitar and my Bible and begin to write. I began to see, in a way I hadn’t seen before, that all of these little stories were really telling one Big Story. And this is the Story that infuses our own stories with meaning and hope, in every season. When I look back on 2011, I think of it as the year where my love for songwriting and my love for God’s Word really came together, and it was really meaningful for me.

After my year of writing from Scripture, I was able to record my latest album, The Blood + the Breath, which centers on the theme of redemption. Each song “parachutes” the listener into different moments in the redemption narrative—the call of Abraham, the Passover, Ezekiel’s dry bones, the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’s resurrection, Pentecost and more. It excites me that people can listen to these songs and this Story in the everyday moments—in the carpool line or on their way to work or with their kids. Right now, I’m working on material for a new album that will also have songs straight from Scripture, but will center around a different theme… likely the “upside down-ness” of God’s kingdom. I hope to record it early this spring and I’m really, really excited about it.

When the Hope Mommies leadership asked me to be a part of this retreat, they also asked if I would be willing to write a song from Psalm 16, our passage and theme for the weekend. It has been such a gift to spend time in this Psalm, especially with you and this retreat in mind. The familiar words of David have taken on a depth and a faith that I have never really seen before. Oh that we could say with David, “The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup… I have no good apart from you, Lord!” even in the midst of the hardest things. My hope for the conference is that I would be a conduit for God’s Story, and the hope and joy that is found in it, even—no, especially!—in seasons of suffering and sorrow. Again, I am so thankful to be a part of this sacred time with you and am looking forward to being with you in March.

Registration for the 2017 Hope Mommies Retreat is now closed.  The response to this year’s Hope Mommies Retreat has been greatly encouraging! Thank you to everyone who has registered to come. We are so excited to spend a weekend remembering, hoping and growing in Christ with you. If you would like to be added to the waitlist, please email director@hopemommies.org.

Caroline Cobb

Connect with Caroline:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/carolinecobbmusic/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/carocobbmusic

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carocobbmusic/

Get a free sample of the Blood + the Breath on Noisetrade.

“Do Not Lose Heart,” a song for the suffering. Written from Romans 8 and 2 Corinthians 4 after Nick’s father was diagnosed with ALS. Download free as a part of The Gospel Coalition’s recent compilation: https://thegospelcoalition.bandcamp.com/track/do-not-lose-heart