This summer I’m bingeing country artist Martina McBride. She’ll be right here in Walla Walla for our county fair at the end of August and I. Can’t. Help. Myself. Michael and I have tickets on “Floor A”—the center of the arena, between the bandstand and the stage. I’m gonna belt every song I know, and I’m hoping I know every song. Hence, the bingeing—time to explore her music, especially any hits I don’t know, and hopefully find new favorites. But first I return to the song that connected me with Martina 25 years ago.
Remember the CD mail-order marketing of the late ‘90s? For me, a teen reaching a few timid fingers out of my homeschooled-on-a-farm cocoon, an offer of a dozen free compact discs was too good to pass up.
The ‘90s and early 2000s were my puritan years—no dating, no secular music. I lived those moral convictions with great gusto. My collection of CDs, which by high school graduation filled two disc storage albums, consisted almost entirely of Contemporary Christian music (Michael W. Smith, every Jaci Valasquez album, Kathy Troccoli), along with a compilation of Elvis Presley’s gospel songs, and a few “pagan” discs from my musician father—Peter, Paul and Mary; Roger Miller; Cat Stevens. The Cat Stevens album included “Two Fine People,” with a scandalous lyric about breast kissing—that was a new thought.
The summer after my 15th birthday I worked at a small orchard in a neighboring town, thinning and picking peaches and nectarines. The self-assigned orchard crew leader, a tough woman named Dawn, kept the portable stereo in the orchard tuned to country radio, shifting it down the rows as we moved our ladders and picked only ripe fruit—the best I’ve ever tasted. By the end of that summer I knew most of the country hits of the year 2000. That same summer, my sister worked as a lifeguard at the city pool in the next one-horse-town down the line from where I picked fruit. Country music was the backdrop there, too, and we both finished out high school with the stereos in our matching white Chevy Corsicas tuned to the country station.
On the radio I heard Martina McBride sing “There You Are,” a slow song full of metaphor about the omnipresence of a lover. I immediately adopted it as a Christian song about the ever-presence of God. This adoption allowed it into my stringent collection of music. I wanted to buy the album with that song, but didn’t know which album to buy. It took me a couple of tries, and that is how I came to possess Martina McBride’s albums Evolution and Emotion—the latter includes the song “There You Are.”
Popular music, along with all Disney movies, and most fiction books, were absent from my childhood home. As a Junior in high school—the first year I didn’t homeschool—I became best friends with Terah, who listened to popular music. I picked up a song here and there. She gave me the Shrek soundtrack and introduced me to Billy Gillman, who sang country that was pop enough she could handle it. At first I felt a bit sneaky adding those Martina McBride albums to my Christian-curated collection, but my loyalty was sealed when I read online that Martina sidelined her touring so her children could have a normal upbringing, with her in it. I mean, doesn’t that speak for her music?
Evolution and Emotion are cherished albums 25 years later, and Martina continues to be my favorite country artist, although I haven’t kept up with her later releases. Her Christmas albums play in our house every December, and I learned the chords for “This Uncivil War” so I could sing and play it on my guitar.
In preparation for the concert at the county fair, I’ve been listening to all 14 of Martina’s albums. There’s some good classic country stuff in there, like the song about crying on the shoulder of the road. Her first three albums lean toward “whiny country” (or, if you prefer, “classic country”) and I’m finding I don’t enjoy them as much as her country-pop sound. But one album, released 17 years after Emotion, quickly became a new favorite from beginning to end. I can sing parts of every song now. And—once again—the song that captivated me most, reminds me of God. The album is Reckless, and the title song is about, well, being reckless, rushing headlong into everything. The rash person in the song makes a rash statement about her lover, new words for my standing conviction that God is crazy: “For loving me the way you do / I know I’m reckless / But you must be reckless, too.”
I don’t suppose God is reckless in a traditional sense (“reckless” is generally defined as a lack of concern for consequences), careless about the consequences of His decisions—given all that omniscience and “outside of time” stuff. But, unlike humans, perhaps God doesn’t make decisions based on consequences. Maybe He doesn’t even base decisions on “outcomes”—the sophisticated version of consequences. What if it’s all about creativity, the making of us; and presence, seeing us? What if it’s about doing a whole lot of reckless things for people who will never return the favor, the affection?
I’m looking forward to a reunion on August 28—a return to age 15 and nectarines, to the memory of CD clubs and having my own car (a Garth Brooks CD was in the player when I bought the car), and a do-over of the time I missed hearing Martina at the 2019 Ventura County Fair. I’m looking forward to singing in a sea of strangers, watching the moon rise above the stage, everything sounding muted on the way home. And I’m looking forward to celebrating the God who loves me through my puritan phases, arrogance, anger, and disbelief. He has sent love notes to me in country music, TV shows, and irreverent books. He has taken me on dates to therapy offices, quiet campgrounds, and Bible studies. I know I’m reckless (believe me, perfectionism is its own version of recklessness), but He must be reckless, too.
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