WATCH: Nashville songwriter (and dad) sings a message to his kids

Let me be completely honest with you. Sometimes I’m sick of music. I’m sick of the road. I miss my home and my family. That boyish thrill of being in a different city every night is long gone. It’s been twenty years since I first started doing concerts, and I’m no longer surprised when people tell me I look tired—I always look tired. But, as some wise farmer somewhere surely said, nothing worth doing is ever easy. When I was a young man I heard a call as clear as day, and that call led me here, to a life of writing stories and singing songs, doing my small part to proclaim the Kingdom of God—both its presence and its coming consummation—and at no time do I remember hearing a promise that following that call would be easy. Yesterday I listened to the final mixes of this record from start to finish and felt a rush of gratitude and renewal of spirit. For two months I was able to make music—music for goodness sake!—with one of my dearest friends. I was forced, by the fact that I have a mortgage payment and a label deadline, to make an album, which is to say I was forced to stop and look around at the place God has brought me to. I see a lovely wife and three sweet children. I see a little house on the side of a hill and a garden out back. I see a church, and the communion of the saints, and a world that is brimming with too much beauty to ignore. I also see those painful mysteries, those dark trees, and plenty of sorrow—more than I’d like—but none of that changes for a second what I was called to all those years ago. I have no real choice but to look at my life and tell about what I see, to whomever will listen. I hope you will. And I hope you hear echoes not just of your story in these songs, but God’s. — Andrew Peterson, musician, songwriter, author (quote taken from his website)