The rest of the series: Intro and Chapter 1. Chapter 2. Chapter 3.
Jon Foreman, Switchfoot and Me
Ch. 4 – Upside-Down Beauty
The year was 2003. Switchfoot was releasing the album that brought them to the forefront of mainstream attention. And I was chasing a two-year-old who we affectionately called “Forrest” because she never stopped running. In a way, Switchfoot and I were growing up together. They were growing into themselves as a band. And I was doing the same in my life. It was a time of young married life, young motherhood, and music as my constant companion since a half-hour drive lay between me and civilization any time I left the house.
I didn’t think too deeply about the songs on this album when they came out, but again the words fixed in my mind and began to form me in ways I wouldn’t realize until years later.
Dare You to Move was revisited on this album and was a huge hit. The other two big hits on this album carried some of the lines that have stuck with me and shaped my everyday thinking.
This is Your Life offers anchoring focus to a brain that likes to bounce back and forth between past and future and struggles with simply being present:
This is your life
And today is all you’ve got now
And today is all you’ll ever have
Don’t close your eyes
These words come to me again and again, particularly when I am flooded with worries about tomorrow. Echoing the words of Jesus, I sing these lines and am reminded that today is where I belong.
Meant to Live was the hit that brought Switchfoot the most attention, had all kinds of influence in the music world, and gave words to the unrest in every human heart:
We want more than this world’s got to offer…
And everything inside screams for second life.
Another song I’ve continued to go back to over the years is On Fire… a beautiful song of surrender.
When everything inside me
Looks like everything I hate
You are the hope I have for change
You are the only chance I’ll take
This album was such a huge success that 20 years later they have released a new recording of it, and a variety of artists have released covers of it. (This one’s my favorite). Oddly enough, the title track from the album never really crossed my radar until this time last year.
The Beautiful Letdown came into my life at a time when broken and losing hope were the mildest words I could use to describe the state I was in. Knowing Switchfoot’s own story surrounding this album, this song felt like having them enter into my pain.
It was a beautiful letdown
When I crashed and burned
When I found myself alone unknown and hurt
It was a beautiful letdown
The day I knew
That all the riches this world had to offer me
Would never do
Again they gave words to my experience, and then they offered me a direction to set my sights.
In a world full of bitter pain and bitter doubts
I was trying so hard to fit in
Until I found out
That I don’t belong here (I don’t belong)
I don’t belong here (I don’t belong)
I will carry a cross and a song where I don’t belong (I don’t belong)
Once more, these men were companions when I needed someone the most.
Over the years, one song from this album has stayed with me more than any other. The song that makes me think of growing little girls singing from the back seat, while I got lost in words that set my world right-side up by turning “normal” upside down.
Where’s your treasure, where’s your hope
If you get the world and lose your soul
Ah, the liberating gift of perspective.
