Wounded

Anger, Grief, and The Civil Wars

Music and Healing, Poignant Songs

civil warsWhen I was growing up, heavy metal or hard rock was not okay in my house. It was the devil’s music. So, I never went near it until about 1986, when, in my youth group at church, I was introduced to Rez Band and Stryper, a couple of rock bands comprised by Christians. Rez (or The Resurrection Band) was gritty and raw, and I found that very appealing. And then there was Stryper, the opposite of gritty and raw, but still with a little edge (especially in light of the environment in which I grew up). These two bands were my introduction into harder music. As time went on, I gravitated more and more toward that stuff.

I think I was drawn to the intensity of harder music. One of the intense bands that I fell in love with was Project 86. What drew me into their music was that same rawness and grittiness I heard in Rez. But, I enjoyed P86 much more than Rez. They were honest about God, the church, and the dark stuff that happens in the church. And, they rocked hard. And, if I’m honest, there was some anger in their music and my heart resonated with that anger.

About three years ago, my hunger for angry music began to fade a bit. I remember when I first started listening to The Civil Wars around that time, and how their music was like a magnet for me and I couldn’t stop listening. The draw for me was the sorrow in so many of their songs. Those songs are sober, emotive, and heart-rending. One song in particular, “Falling,” grabbed a deep, firm hold of me during that time (more on that in a moment).

It is not coincidental that around that same time, in the fall of 2011, I participated in my first session of Wounded at Valleybrook Church. I mentioned something about this program in the ” The Song That Changed Everything” post. During that season, as I processed my own wounds, recognized their origins, and began to experience freedom, I learned about the dynamics of and relationship between anger and grief when it comes to the healing process.

For so many years, I was the angry young man who, sometimes boisterously and sometimes silently, was constantly bucking against the system, full of defiance. I began to see that my anger was not really about all the stuff I had been railing against. It was about my wounds. It was anger toward God and toward those who wounded me. As I processed through this truth, I was able to begin moving past being angry about my wounds and start feeling the sorrow for what I lost because of them. I was progressing from anger to grief.

So, it makes sense that I was more and more drawn to sad songs during that time. I was sad, and appropriately so. Much had been taken from me through the emotional wounds I had received in my childhood and young adult years.

And, during that season, I was also trying to figure out how to navigate life, especially in regard to my relationships with my wounders. In some of these relationships, I had lived in a lie for what felt like forever, believing things were good when they really were not. In fact, those relationships were dark, ugly, and harmful. But, I had been numb to those realities, and any time that I considered the possibility of something being wrong, I also numbed my emotions and found ways not to feel the anger and grief that were brimming under the surface.

This is why The Civil Wars’ “Falling” spoke to me on such a deep level. Consider the following lyrics:

Haven’t you seen me sleepwalking?
‘Cause I’ve been holding your hand
Haven’t you noticed me drifting?
Oh, let me tell you I am

Tell me it’s nothing
Try to convince me
That I’m not drowning
Oh let me tell you I am

Please, please tell me you know
I’ve got to let you go
I can’t help falling out of love with you

Why am I feeling so guilty?
Why am I holding my breath?
I’m worried ’bout everyone but me
And I just keep losing myself

Oh, won’t you read my mind
Don’t you let me lie here
And die here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qdk3iPFYxg

The main folks that wounded me in my formative years had always convinced me, through word and action, that the way they did things was the way things should be done. I grew up believing that what I experienced was not only normal, but that it was, in fact, good. As I began to break away from this fantasy and see things for what they really were, I could heartily relate to the feelings in this song….

I’ve been going through the motions, even though I know something is amiss…

You keep trying to convince me that everything is good, when I know that I’m drowning…

Won’t you reach out to me? Can’t you see I’m dying a slow, painful emotional death?

Oh, how I could relate to those verses, those thoughts, those emotions. I will forever be grateful that The Civil Wars wrote and recorded that song. It has played a role in my personal healing process simply by saying things that I needed to say, by expressing emotions that had laid dormant within me for years, for decades. Again, this is the power of music.

Thankfully, as I have continued to heal, I’m finding that angry music can still speak to me. It can help me feel things I need to feel. The same can still be said for sad songs. After all, I am very much in the midst of the healing process. And, I can also embrace happy songs, love songs, and songs that are emotive in a variety of ways, because I am beginning to fully feel all my emotions and embrace them as part of who God created me to be, as a fully-functional human being. But, getting to this point has not been easy, and I have had my hand held throughout by The Civil Wars, Project 86, and any number of other gifted musicians who bare their souls, challenge me, resonate with deeply felt emotions, and help me find my own voice.

The Song That Changed Everything

Music and Healing


I grew up going to church. I went to Sunday School, worship services, Vacation Bible School, and various Sunday night and mid-week events. After graduating high school, I went on a short term outreach trip to Mexico and have done several such trips since. I went to a missions training school and a Bible college. I have always been neck deep in spiritual “stuff” like that.

Despite all of that experience, until three years ago, there was a pretty deep problem living in me, especially considering how much churchin’ I’d had. From my earliest church memories, I had known that “God so loved the world…” and “God is love.” I had always been taught that God loved me. But, I didn’t believe it. Oh, I knew it. I had the correct theology when it comes to God loving me, but the reality of His love did not live in me.

In 2011, I signed up for a program called Wounded at Valleybrook Church. Wounded helps folks like me heal from the wounds caused by abuse and/or neglect. I walked through a lot of healing during that season. It was rich, deep, and liberating. And, for the first time, I began to believe that God actually does love me… this guy, Ed Hudgins in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. How did that happen? How did I come to believe this? Well, it was because of a song, the truth in the lyrics of the song, and how that truth was painted in the lyrics.

The Wounded meetings would usually start with us singing some songs together, like you might experience in a Sunday morning service. During one meeting, I shared with my small group that I had a hard time singing some of those songs, especially the ones that talked about, in intimate and really descriptive terms, how God loves me. I felt disingenuous when singing them. The guys gently and lovingly encouraged me to “sing them anyway.” They weren’t being jerks; they were just encouraging me to embrace the truth in the songs’ lyrics. So, I listened to those guys and I began to let go and sing.

One of those songs was “How He Loves” by John Mark McMillan. Here is a sampling of some of the lyrics:

He is jealous for me,
Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree,
Bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.

And oh, how He loves us so,
Oh how He loves us,
How He loves us so

So Heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss
And my heart turns violently inside of my chest,
I don’t have time to maintain these regrets,
When I think about, the way…

He loves us,
Oh! how He loves us,
Oh! how He loves us,
Oh how He loves.

The picture McMillan paints of God’s love here is unlike any kind of love or intimacy I had experienced before 2011. That’s why it was such a friggin’ uncomfortable song to sing. Does God really love me like that? When His love hits me, is it really as intimate and passionate as a “sloppy wet kiss?” Can I just lose sight of my many regrets when basking in the depth and intimacy of divine love? These words challenged me. They pushed me. And, as I sung them, I began to accept the truth in them, slowly but surely.

That truth grabbed a hold of my innermost being and for the first time in my life, I began to feel safe, secure, and really, truly loved. The feeling of being loved has literally changed everything for me. I have become a better husband, father, friend, and member of my community. It has helped me to love others better and to actually receive their love for me. It has brought new life to my relationship with my wife and we share an intimate love now that we had never known before. My life has literally been transformed because of the truth in John Mark McMillan’s song

It’s not that “How He Loves” told me anything that I didn’t already “know.” It told me that thing I had always known in such a creative, expressive, and emotive way that I finally began to grasp the passionate and pursuing nature of God’s love for me in a way I had never before experienced. I have always loved music. I have been impacted by lyrics and melodies time and again. But, I had never experienced the life changing impact that I experienced through McMillan’s song. This is the power of music. It can literally change lives. It changed mine.

This is why I have become an advocate for the arts, especially on the local level. The arts can help us grow into better versions of ourselves. They can challenge us with truth our hearts desperately need. They can literally change lives, and the world. They certainly have helped revolutionize my world.

A Renewed Focus

Music and Healing

TS Collage

Welcome to the new, improved, and refocused Tomme Suab. I launched this site in October 2013 (after about a year of mental and emotional incubation) with a desire to promote music from the Chippewa Valley, because there is just so many talented songwriters and musicians in this region. Since then, I’ve written about great artists like Adelyn Rose, Savannah Smith, We Are the Willows, and many others. I’ve promoted local events and concerts and advocated for the Confluence Project. I fully intend on continuing this kind of emphasis. However, I have also been experiencing a refining of vision, if you will.

The primary element of that refining process has involved me coming to an understanding of how the emotive aspects of songs are what move me the most about those songs. As I’ve shared my thoughts about various artists and their art, I have gotten consistent feedback from those artists about how I’ve been able to capture the emotional elements of their music. For me, it’s about feeling the artists’ pain and joy.

My focus on the emotionality of music makes sense, in light of my own experience over the last three years. In 2011, I enrolled in “Wounded” at Valleybrook Church, a program that helps participants heal from emotional wounds caused by abuse and/or neglect. The impact of this program on my life has been profound. I feel things deeply now, whereas, for most of my life, I used to numb difficult emotions like sadness and grief. I typically wouldn’t really allow myself to feel joy or happiness. In these last few years, I have learned how to really feel my emotions and allow myself to feel whatever I need to feel. I have learned to really “see” and “hear” people and connect with what they are feeling as well. I could go on and on about the healing and freedom I have experienced because of Wounded. But, that’s another discussion for another context.

So, all this has lead me to a place in which I realize that I really want to connect people with the emotionality of music, especially, but not exclusively, the music of the Chippewa Valley. I believe that there is healing in music, both for the artist and for the listener. There is healing in self-expression; there is healing in listening and connecting to others’ self-expression. I don’t fully understand those dynamics, but I know they are real and they can be life-changing.

Tomme Suab will still promote local events and advocate for the arts. We will still discuss album releases and such. However, we will mostly center on that healing element in music: the emotive quality of a song or album. My hope is that you will connect with this emotive quality and walk away with a new or fuller appreciation of not only this aspect of music, but how it affects you emotionally. I want you to feel what you need to feel, to be more aware of your own emotions, to experience sorely-needed emotional healing.

So, enjoy the site! Use the site to hear about artists you may not know or album releases. But, if you choose to go deeper, I invite you to do so. And, if you have any questions about this renewed focus or emotional healing, please reach out to me at ed@tommesuab.com.