Brighten My Heart

In the course of doing archival research on myself, which is a somewhat distressing enterprise if only for the amount of sheer earnest emo-style songs I wrote between the ages of sixteen and nineteen, I came across a tape of myself singing "Brighten My Heart," a Sixpence song from a worship compilation called Exodus which I have never owned. I must have heard the song on Christian radio, or maybe gotten it on a compilation CD with one of the music magazines I was in the habit of reading.

The reason it felt significant -- to come across a recording of myself singing the song, I mean -- is because it is the pretty much the only song on hours of tapes I have listened to that actually still means something to me, with a sentiment that matters to the person I am ten years later. (With the possible exception of "Sucked Out" by Superdrag. But all the other songs are essentially improvised punk rock or emo numbers about a handful of girls, and most of them contain either the words "girl," "school," and "cool" in rapid succession.)

"Brighten My Heart" is a simple four chords, and the lyrics have a lovely clarity bemoaning (as usual) an undesirable state of heart/mind/body/soul. The second verse repeats the first, a sneaky tactic I don't like to let this band get away with, though they do it once in a while, but it's the prayer-response to the malady-call that makes the song work: brighten my heart, lighten my soul, still my thoughts...and ultimately, "help me open my heart to you / O Jesus, it's what I long to do."

This is a prayer I needed ten years ago, and one I need now, and one I think I will always need.

Here is a link where you can listen to this lovely song -- one of very few that Sixpence recorded which can accurately be called a "worship song."