It would be appropriate that days after I got to witness the great Brooke Fraser in concert, I find an article she wrote for a Christian teen magazine where she once worked. An article I had been looking for for MORE THAN A YEAR...#sweet!
I've drawn a lot of meaning and inspiration from it myself, seeing as it was coming from an all-time favorite, and I just thought it was so amazing I would copy & paste the article for you guys (I love you all). I think the original website it came from might not have the existing page anymore or something like that...?
So, go ahead, don't be afraid, be inspired ;)
BROOKE FRASER
"I love Christ, I love people, I love stories and I love words, so you can imagine what a treat it was for me to talk to people across the globe, hear how God had changed and used their lives and then get to write about it for young’uns like you and me. I interviewed everyone from African missionaries, to eating disorder counselors, to ‘big name’ Christian music artists.
Little did I know, that less than a year later, I would be the one fielding questions from the press as the songs I’d written in my bedroom hit #1 in mainstream radio; one after another. Since then, my life has moved at quite a speed. Hamish, the guy at Soul Purpose (who has written much of this issue), jokes about how it was weird saying goodbye to me, see me move to Auckland, then reappear, plastered on the back of stagecoach buses all over Wellington.
If you’ve read any of the articles or interviews about me, you can get a reasonable idea of me, Brooke, the music girl. I’ve been asked most questions any musician gets asked in the media, but to be honest, I got bored pretty quick of enquiries about my ex-All Black dad (he played before I was born… I don’t remember and I don’t understand the first thing about sport), my love life (to which I wanna reply with 1 Cor 7:34: “An unmarried woman is concerned about the Lord’s affairs: her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit.”), and probably the most simplistic and worst question ever, “Paris or Nicole?”
So this is my deal. I grew up opposite the Naenae-Epuni train line in Lower Hutt, Wellington, in the house my family owned in the middle of a block of state housing. Its residents were the typical Kiwi melting pot of Maori, Polynesians, Europeans and most-ofthe- above mixes like myself and my brothers, as well as refugees from various countries throughout the Middle East and Africa. It wasn’t an affluent neighborhood, nor was it a boring one! I still recall with fondness those occasions when the Armed Offenders Squad would knock on our door in the middle of the night asking us to stay away from the windows for the next couple of hours and assuring us there was no need for alarm. My brother and I would peek through the curtains as shadowy, armed figures crept on their bellies across our lawn and crouched in our tree houses preparing to carry out drug raids on the neighbours. Ah, those were the days.
Yes, my dad played for the All Blacks, but it was before I was born and before rugby was a professional sport in NZ – we weren’t rich. If we were, we wouldn’t have been living in Oxford Terrace, Naenae. I had a pretty regular childhood, with a rad mum who taught me to love reading and thinking and laughing, and (as far as I was concerned) a regular dad who drove trucks for a living and did radio interviews on weekends and got stopped in the street a lot when we went out. But my family has the same dysfunctions and brokenness as any other and, consequently, I’ve never had any illusions that fame was something that improved your life or made you whole. I guess it always seemed more of an inconvenience than anything.
I only say this because a lot of people seem to think that if you’re a musician you want to be a celebrity. But most musicians in the world aren’t celebrities, and pretty much everything about the concept of ‘celebrity’ is a complete load of bollocks anyhow. I reckon that’s one of the reasons God placed me in the family He did, so that He wouldn’t need to kick that lie out of me later. (The lie being that once you’re a ‘celebrity’, you’ve made it in life and suddenly you’re more important than other people.) Oh, puh-lease. My friend Mia often says that if being in the public eye isn’t about influence, it’s about insecurity. I agree with her to an extent. If you want to reach a lot of people for their good, great! But if you want to be in front of a lot of people because that will make you feel good about yourself, l-a-m-e!
I always knew that I wanted to write and play music, but kinda sensed that there was something much more significant that my life was for and didn’t know what that meant. I felt unsettled and displaced not just in the world but in my own life; in my own skin. I didn’t know what was wrong or how to fix it. And the more I tried to achieve my way to feeling okay or worthy, the more I tried to fix myself; the more I began to believe I wasn’t worth fixing. I ended up in a pretty bad way and pretty much thought the world would be better off without me.
Then Jesus introduced Himself to me. Though my birth certificate reads 1983, I reckon I was born in 1999, when I met Jesus – not in a church or on a camp or through people, but alone in my bedroom with an open Bible and a tangible revelation that the Son of God was not only real, but alive and awesome and stronger than the chains that bound me. I realised He was acutely familiar with everything about me and inside of me and that, rather than responding to this with repulsion, as I would have expected, His response to me was (and, indeed, had only ever been) love and an invitation to love Him back.
You see, I don’t consider that my life began until I met Christ and I won’t consider it welllived unless I use it to one end: to know Christ and to make Him known. He is the best of me; my purity, my joy, my peace, my strength, my compassion. When I’ve been afraid, He’s been my protector. When I’ve been ashamed, He’s been the lifter of my head. When I’ve felt alone, He’s laid beside me. When all the safe things or safe people in my life have crumbled, He’s been my Rock. When I’ve not known what to do, His word has been my instructor. When I’ve been in the desert places and unable to ‘feel’ Him or understand what the heck He’s doing with me, it’s been His Holy Spirit that has worked in me “to will and act according to His purpose” (Phil 2:13) and choose to praise Him; thank Him, bless Him, obey Him, seek Him, love Him and live for Him.
While He is all these things (Comforter, Teacher, Protector, Friend), I use ‘He’s been’ because they are all things that I know (have personally experienced) of God. As you know Jesus more and more, you cannot help but love Him more and more. He is totally wonderful. I walk around confident because I’m a woman loved wholly, ferociously, passionately and intimately by the living God. My identity is in this relationship. Not in how well I can sing or how many albums I’ve sold, not in whether people are applauding or criticising, and not in my past or my screw-ups.
Derek Prince once said, “The hardest test we are ever likely to face, and the one we are least likely to pass, is success.” God allowed many tests in my life before He saw fit to send that particular test my way, and I hope that, in His eyes, I’ve been faithful. And it’s only the beginning…kinda scary! Jesus said, “Don’t think I’ve come to make life cozy…If you don’t go all the way with me, through thick and thin, you don’t deserve me. If your first concern is to look after yourself, you’ll never find yourself. But if you forget about yourself and look to me, you’ll find both yourself and me.” (Matt 10:34-39). There is much thick and thin to come for us young people. Let’s be a generation who truly abandon ourselves to Christ, who are all about loving Him and making His praise glorious and getting as many people in on this incredible freedom as we can.
I think our lives should be like icebergs. The great things that people might see above the surface should only be the smallest reflection of a relationship and life of devotion that goes much deeper. Jesus talked a lot about not making a show of our obedience; our praying, our giving. He said not to be like the hypocrites who love to pray where everyone can see them, one squinty eye open to see who is watching them and being impressed. “But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” (6:6)
My most powerful moments of ministry have not been, and will not be, on the stage. They’ve been sitting, knee to knee, in a darkened church side room with a 12 year old girl whose father has abandoned her for his new family. They’ve been on an international flight next to a Brit rocker, who, intrigued by a hymn album I had in my CD wallet, asked if I was religious. I replied, “No, I’m not religious, but I’m really into Jesus,” prompting him to put down what he was doing and asking me to talk to him about that. They’ve been crying with a producer in the dressing room of an Australian television network studio as God overwhelmed us both with His love for her. They’ve been singing “Shout to the Lord” to a group of orphans on the side of the road in Rwanda. They’ve been kneeling in prayer with a single mother out the back of a pub in the Waikato after a show, broken glass digging into our knees.
No, I’m not a musician because I want to be famous. Music is my tool, not my goal. I will not love my art more than I love my Lord. I want to fear God more than I fear man. By the grace of God I desire to live “a life Jesus will be proud of: bountiful in fruits from the soul, making Jesus Christ attractive to all, getting everyone involved in the glory and praise of God.” (Phillipians 1). The music industry is my job, but primarily it’s my mission field. I write songs because I love to, but I mainly write songs because I can’t not. There is a fire in my belly and a word in my mouth that I didn’t put there, therefore I can’t takeit away, no matter how much it hurts sometimes. God’s Word says that His gifts and call are irrevocable.
One of my heroes is William Booth, a radical soul winner and lover of Jesus; friend to the poor and founder of the Salvation Army. His son Bramwell once asked him how he’d persevered through decades of extreme trials and setbacks, and William answered by describing how he’d knelt in a Nottingham chapel at the age of 15 and vowed “that God should have all there was to have of William Booth”. Later his daughter Eva was to comment, “That wasn’t really his secret — his secret was that he never took it back.”
I too, have invited God to have all there is to have of Brooke Fraser. And I’m not taking it back."
She is. so. cool.
:)
