Audra Haney: Thanks for tuning in to the Newborn Promise podcast. A production of Graham Blanchard Incorporated. You are listening to an interview with Ellie Holcomb, called "A Conversation on Music and Motherhood." For today's show notes, transcript, and more information about Your Newborn Promise ProJect, please visit grahamblanchard.com. Well, thank you so much for Joining us today. We think today's guest is a total treat. Ellie Holcomb is an accomplished songwriter, Dove Award winner, and is recently celebrating the success of her much-anticipated fourth album, Red Sea Road. Ellie is also the mom of two young children, so we interviewed her to get a peek into her world. How she balances career and children, and how motherhood has changed her. Ellie has a strikingly Joyful spirit and immediately makes you feel as if you were longtime friends. We personally think her amazing laugh and her awesome insights into parenting will have you laughing out loud and loving Jesus even more at the end of the interview. We hope she brings you as much inspiration as she did us. Hi Ellie. Thank you so much for Joining us today. Ellie Holcomb: Absolutely. I'm thrilled to be here. Thanks for having me. Audra Haney: Ellie, before we dive in and talk about motherhood, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about your music. You Just released a new album, Red Sea Road, at the beginning of 2017. Talk to me about how God placed these new songs on your heart. Ellie Holcomb: You know, it has been, the past two years for our community, we have this beautiful community of friends and family here in Nashville, Tennessee, and the last two years for our community have been really heavy and full of a lot of suffering and sorrow and loss. Red Sea Road is really Just a record full of songs about how I've seen God show up in the middle of all of that pain. So, every song really was kind of birthed in the midst of me going, "Okay, Lord, I need to remember who you are or I want to remember how you're meeting us in the midst of these struggles and these trials. I want to remember this" because I tend to forget. I am so grateful to have this record full of songs that really do celebrate the way that I've seen God be faithful no matter what we're facing. I've seen him draw very near to our broken hearts and sort of make a way for us to all keep going when there seemed to be no way. So, it's a record that really is born out of a lot of suffering and sorrow, and then out of the way that I've seen God be so faithful to draw near to us and to give us hope in the middle of all that suffering and loss. Audra Haney: Well, that's so powerful. Tell me a little bit about the title track. You wrote that for some friends in the midst of a tragic loss. Tell me about the name and the inspiration behind it. Ellie Holcomb: Sure. So, I got together with my friends Crystal Wells and Nicole West who are dear friends and co-writers of mine. I was Just kind of catching them up on what had been going on in our community. There are two families specifically who lost babies in the past two years. I was just sharing with them the grief, but also the nearness of God that we were experiencing even in the midst of that grief. But, man, there are times when the sorrow is overwhelming and so I sort of felt even as I was talking to them, sharing with them, that I felt confronted with the choice to either despair or hold on to hope. It was Crystal Wells that pointed us to this beautiful blog post that our friend, Ann Voss Camp who's an incredible author and writer, that she had written. She told this beautiful story and she kinda describes it like this, she says, "We believe that an unseen hope makes a Red Sea Road where there seems to be no way." Man, I ... that is what I was seeing Jesus do. When you think about the Israelites, you know, there's an army behind them. They've been delivered from slavery and there's an army behind them and eminent death behind them and then they come to that Red Sea Road, and I don't know about you if I'm the Israelites I'm going, "Okay, I'm definitely going to die if I stay here. But it may kill me to walk through the middle of an ocean." It is a scary thing to trust God and to take him at his word some days. But what does he do? He opens up that Red Sea and in EXodus 14:14, I love the verse, he says, "You need only to be still. The Lord will fight for you." That is what I've seen God do. I've seen him make a way for us, for me and our community to carry on. Even under the weight of great sorrow and great suffering, he's made a way for us to continue and he's given us a reason to sing and to have hope because he was broken for us so that we could know we'd never be alone in the brokenness that we're experiencing. Audra Haney: Wow. That's so powerful and I think it is, it's that great pull between we don't want to suffer, yet we do and we do see God show up and we go so much deeper in our relationship with him. We eXperience his presence in such a powerful way. Along those lines, tell me about "Find You Here." You had a story that hit close to home behind that song. Ellie Holcomb: I wrote "Find You Here" in the wake of a cancer diagnosis for my dad. It was actually a year ago yesterday. My mom and dad's response to ... nobody's ever ready for that, really. No one's ever ready for that call or for that teXt. It was a year ago yesterday that my mom and dad, in the wake of that, wanted to have a praise and worship night at their house. You know, the Journey ahead of us looked pretty bleak and daunting and so many unknowns. So many questions. I will never forget that night watching my parents run into all the darkness ahead of them with their hands raised in the air Just praising God. It seemed like the most unnatural response to that circumstance. But, it the same breath, it was irresistible. I couldn't help but want to just follow them. "Find You Here" is really about the profound peace that my family and I experienced in the midst of that overwhelming diagnosis. It comes out of the promise of Philippians 4, 4 through 7, "ReJoice in the Lord, always. I'll say it again. Rejoice. Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near." We eXperienced the nearness of God and that profound peace in a way that marked me. It will mark me for the rest of my life. My prayer is that everyone who hears that song would encounter that same hope and peace that we found in Jesus during that trial. We really did eXperience God drawing near to our breaking hearts and he was bringing comfort into the chaos of what we were facing and he was covering all of our fears with his faithfulness and I'm so, so grateful. Audra Haney: Yes, and with that Journey you guys have had great news on that front as well. Ellie Holcomb: Yeah, we, my dad is in remission. We are so, so grateful for that. We know, in the same breath, that that's not the end of everybody's cancer story and we also know that there are no guarantees in this life with health. So, it's been a really sweet thing to hang on to the one guarantee that we do have and that's the love and the faithfulness of God. We know that this life isn't the end of the story. We know that because of what Jesus did on the cross, 'cause he died on the cross and walked out of the grave, that there's hope and there's healing ahead. We're not really home yet. It's been a sweet thing to have a taste of what we're headed towards here on this side of glory. Audra Haney: I love that and you have described this album as declarative. Tell me what you mean by that. Ellie Holcomb: You know, my record before, As Sure as the Sun, I felt like was sort of more, "Okay, God I believe this! But, help my unbelief!" I wrote a lot of these songs on this record wanting to remind myself of how, I Just cannot deny at the end of these two years that God is faithful. I Just, I feel like I can say from the bottom of the pit, I've seen Jesus meet me there. So, I wanted to write songs that would remind my soul, "Hey! He shows up even here. Even in the midst of this sorrow that feels totally overwhelming.