Singing Through It

Sara Groves: 'It's Going To Be Alright'

Joanna Frieda Mulder (my wife!) went looking for answers in Christian churches, but never really liked the music — except for Sara Groves. ‘She helped me find my way to the possibility of a god far more mysterious than the one preached from most pulpits.’

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When I was a sophomore in high school my brother became very mentally ill. He dropped out of college and came home unrecognizable. My parents did what they could to support him while also looking out for me, but none of us were prepared for the pain of the years to come.

My answer to troubles at home was to seek certainty elsewhere. Senior year I started dating a devout evangelical Christian whose family seemed reassuringly uncomplicated. In the span of ten months I attended my first church service, read the Bible cover to cover, and was baptized in front of a joyous congregation and my highly concerned Jewish mother. 

After I made the foolish decision to transfer colleges to be closer to this boyfriend, he ended the relationship. I was not politically conservative. I was too intellectual. I was sexually curious. Within months he had a new girlfriend, one who’d been raised in the church. 

After the breakup I continued to identify as a Christian. I visited every church in the central Illinois town where I went to school. I lived off-campus with Apostolic Christian roommates and joined them for Friday night Bible studies and nursing home singing. Our little house and their apparent wholesomeness felt like a refuge from my own lurking darkness.

My junior year of college I met another Christian boy, this one more liberal in his politics. That summer we traveled to South Africa, where we lived on a farm and cared for children with HIV. When we got back he dumped me, for reasons that were familiar from my last breakup. Because we shared friends, I began to feel alienated from the community where I’d been desperate to find belonging.  

This was when I started listening to Add to the Beauty, a Sara Groves album recommended to me by a girl I’d befriended at my first college, before I transferred. This girl was a Christian but also an artist, which made her seem less indoctrinated. I didn't take to most Christian music, but Groves felt more real. 

I had spent many a Sunday listening to sermons that warned I must disavow my  “ungodly” parts, including feelings of anger, doubt, fear, and lust. This was the trade required, it seemed, for the comforts of Christian community. Groves offered a different take on faith. Her lyrics acknowledged that being alive can be messy, even for Christians. With lines like there are so many ways to hide, there are so many ways not to feel, there are so many ways to deny what is real,  she invited me to dive into my murky and muddy humanness, not suppress it.

Though I am sure Groves herself would hate to hear it, her music was like an exit ramp. She helped me find my way to the possibility of a god far more mysterious than the one preached from most Christian pulpits. I held on to that mystery and left the rest behind. By the time I walked across the stage at my college graduation I was no longer seeking answers at Sunday services. I’d spent a semester on leave, back at my family home, finally facing my sadness about how changed my brother was and the fear that I might develop psychosis too. I was only able to do this, it turned out, with the help of my parents and oldest friends. 

After my brother’s sudden death in 2014 I found myself listening to Add to the Beauty again.

On “It’s Going to Be Alright” Groves sings 

I can tell by your eyes you’re not getting any sleep
You try to rise above but you’re sinking in too deep

By this time I had not set foot in a church in years, but the song still brought catharsis. Groves’s music always points to god, but she also believes in the healing power of other people.

I did not come here to offer you cliches
I will not pretend to know of all your pain
Just when you cannot, then I will hold out faith for you

This is the gift, I’ve come to realize, that we can offer the people we love. Not one of us will escape pain and darkness, but we can hold on to hope for each other.

I believe you'll outlive this pain in your heart
And you'll gain such a strength from what is tearing you apart 

In my work as a mental health therapist I think a lot about how we react to our pain. Do we turn away from it? Try to banish, outrun, or escape it? Or do we sing through it a bit and, in our singing, find a way to be seen by the imperfect people who love and believe in us? 

I still sometimes send “It’s Going to be Alright” to a friend who’s going through something. When Groves sings that it’s going to be alright, I don’t hear that it’s going to be the same as it was, or even that we will ever feel okay about the dark things that we live through. I hear that we can find a way to continue living — and, in that living, become larger. We may be able to hold out our hand to someone else. To believe, if not in a savior from above, at least in the person in front of us. ✹

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Joanna Frieda Mulder is a mental health therapist and writer. She lives in Evanston with her family, and helps make Tracks on Tracks.

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Next week:

• The song I listened to almost every morning when I was 21.

• Johannes Lichtman revisits his time on the suburban LA screamo circuit.