I wrote this song while deployed to Iraq in the late summer of 2010. I started it not long after we arrived “in-country”, and kind of hit a wall about half way through it—so I put it on the shelf for a while. We got pretty busy and I leaned my guitar up against the wall where it gathered the desert dust for a couple months. Our mission traffic got crazy—we were running back to back Counter Terrorism missions in the desert heat for several weeks straight and we were all completely exhausted. It seemed like all we could do was try and grab a bite of chow, maybe get a few hours sleep, and then go back to work.

We were returning to our compound late one night after one such mission and learned that a friend (fellow soldier) in another location had been killed. I remember going to my room in that old concrete building, picking up my guitar and finishing the song right then and there. What had built up behind that wall came spilling out all at once. My close friend in the next room heard what was going on and walked through my door and said, “Brother, I love that song”. I recorded it for him a year later after he lost his left leg and nearly his life to an IED in Afghanistan.

My good friends, Jeff and Paul Parrott, recorded the song for me in their studio here in east TN. When I explained the story behind the song, they just said, “Get over here and let’s get to work”. Paul added the amazing solo toward the end of the song—just banged it out the first time through. I’m so thankful to be surrounded by such awesome and patriotic people! 

Obviously, this song is special to me for many reasons. But one of the most powerful elements of the song is its ability to connect and transcend the anxiety that comes from the experience of “social distancing” (a term that I believe should never have been introduced…). Many people have approached me about their reaction to this song and how it gave them strength in the midst of the Covid-19 reality that settled into our great Country in 2020. At first, I was caught off-guard by this, but then I realized that the undercurrent of uncertainty that the virus brought to our society is similar to how I felt a decade before it reached our shores. There, in that far-away place, trying to process the pain and loss and missing my family so intensely, I found that connecting to my God and staying focused on doing what I thought was right was critical to my resilience. 

I believe that this is true for anyone, in any situation. This song is, in many ways, a conversation between me and God about that very thing.