For the past five years, my friend Jess and I have been enormously huge fans of Josh Wilson, before he even produced his first official record, let alone received a spot on the top of the Christian music charts. His best friend from high school, also named Josh, lives in Salt Lake City and they would often do concerts together at the tiny chapel at the University. That's when I first heard Josh Wilson. I paid $2 to get into the concert and $5 for a plain white CD with "Josh Wilson Unreleased Tracks" written on it. I knew he was a talented musician from the first chord he played. He has unique sound equipment that records what he plays and can record and playback multiple tracks at once, thus sounding like a whole band from one man. Jess, who was my roommate back then, and I would blast Josh Wilson's music whenever we would clean our house and find motivation from singing his music at the top of our lungs. Our favorite song by far was "The Saints."
My senior year of college Josh Wilson got his big break and got his first song in the top 20 of Christian music and went on tour with Matthew West. When Jess and I heard that the tour was passing through Grand Junction, CO, we decided to drive the 4.5 hours to see him. Then Freshmen, Jackie and Josh decided to join us. We made tee shirts and had a blast on our roadtrip. Josh Wilson even recognized me and Jess from the times he had played in Salt Lake. Not to mention he was extremely flattered that we professed our love of his music on our pretty pink chests. And he wrote a blog about us, so we were flattered too.
So, when we heard that Josh Wilson was on tour with Steven Curtis Chapman and had a concert in Idaho Falls, we knew we had to make that drive and reunite the 4 original roadtrippers with our bright pink tee shirts. Wanting to hear "The Saints" like we yelled for at every concert, I began tweeting Josh Wilson a week in advance, in hopes of hearing our favorite song at his concert. He didn't play it, but tweeted me back to meet us by the curtain after the show so he could give us a private concert. It was seriously the coolest thing ever. You can watch the video below. The concert as a whole was also really amazing.
Going to the concert was such a beautiful bookend not only for Josh and Jackie's college career, but also for me and Josh's dating relationship. For months I refused to date Josh because he was a freshman and I was a senior and I couldn't see it going anywhere. Then one night I was crying out to God, asking him what I should do. I was listening to one of Josh Wilson's unreleased songs, and God spoke back to me through the chorus. "They always told me I should guard my heart, but who are they anyway. Nobody told me not to guard too hard, that's why they never stay." I knew I was guarding my heart too hard and not willing to wait and see if God would move the relationship to something more. And it was shortly after that first concert roadtrip that I agreed to date Josh and see where it would go. So, how beautiful that three years later, we would go to his concert again and shortly after which, end our dating relationship... by getting engaged! God's timing is beautiful. :)
You can check out Josh Wilson's music by clicking here.
And please ignore the few places where I sing along in the video. I was really excited and couldn't help myself ;)
No comments:
Post a Comment