It was a Sunday afternoon, but Dan Gardner certainly wouldn’t have called it a ‘lazy Sunday afternoon’. This guy had plenty on his plate in Troy, Michigan in the mid-1980s (See the seal of Troy, Michigan here.), but he realized he needed a few moments of peace and quiet so that he could recapture some gusto for the rest of the day, including an evening worship service that he would be conducting in just a few hours. Dan could have declared implicitly to his Creator “My Life Is In You” on many occasions, given how his life looked from week-to-week; this particular Sunday afternoon was probably not too different from many others, packed with duties and assignments he needed to address. There had been other times when he’d used a specific method in a similar setting to re-center himself. He says this habit was all about waiting on God, and so he allowed his fingers to travel across a piano keyboard, seemingly in an aimless way, as he listened for a voice inside himself. In the next few moments, he heard His response, one that Dan recorded so that those precious few moments could be preserved. His words say take a few moments, shut out everything else, and connect with Him only.
Spontaneity was probably not something foreign to Dan in his connection to God through music. He grew up in a home with parents who evidently encouraged all four of their children musically, while raising them to become Christians. So, some thirty years from when this nurturing environment began, Dan, along with his own family (a wife and two daughters), were in this same home while theirs was being completed. His college education was ongoing, as was his full-time worship ministry at the church (Zion Christian Church) that his parents had helped establish in Troy. Thus, there were lots of familiar surroundings in Dan Gardner’s world, even if they were in a crowded space. He must have known deep inside of himself that the lyrics and the music for ‘My Life…’ were already being sung, in a way. He just needed to access a few quiet moments to harvest the fruit of this, musically. Just a few minutes of playing and singing brought the song to the surface, very naturally, with hardly any struggle to find the right words and music to fit together, as he recalls. Dan says he recognized immediately what a blessing the song was for himself, as a guy trying to complete assignments in his college curriculum, in between ministering to a church body as their worship minister and raising a growing family. Dan had, as someone has said, plenty of ‘irons in the fire’. How did his life stay even-keeled? Dan’s poetry indicates he felt his ‘life’, ‘strength’, and ‘hope’ were ‘in You, Lord’ -- like three legs of a Divine platform, providing a very sturdy support for Dan, and a resulting reason for ‘praise’. He admits today that abandoning himself to God’s Spirit for even just a few moments is still a discipline he hasn’t completely mastered. So, ‘My Life…’ is a special reminder for Dan of what a few uncluttered moments in his otherwise hurly-burly life could produce.
With just a handful of words – ‘My life’, ‘strength’, ‘hope’, ‘praise’, and ‘is in you, Lord’ – Dan Gardner found a way to express what was apparently lying just beneath the surface in the hustle and bustle where he lived in Troy, Michigan in the mid-1980s. Dan says his wife should get plenty of credit for the way he and his family endured this period! Indeed, Dan must have had plenty of people – from parents, siblings, church members, college class members, and his own family – reminding him how any of us survive and stay oriented in a turbulent set of circumstances. When isn’t there too much going on in the life of a 30-something, or in the lives of the rest of us from day to day, for that matter? It feels more like real life to me when it’s busy; indeed, who wants the alternative -- boredom? I can turn to Him in either circumstance, but it’s really energizing when lots is ongoing and I can sense He’s at work. Feel strong, have hope, He’s watching your life. That’s Dan Gardner talking from Troy.
The song story was found in the following book: I Could Sing of Your Love Forever: The Stories Behind 100 of the World’s Most Popular Worship Songs, by Lindsay Terry, Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2008.
See information on the seal of Troy Michigan image, including its public domain status here: File:Seal of Troy, Michigan.svg - Wikimedia Commons . This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published in the United States between 1928 and 1977, inclusive, without a copyright notice. For further explanation, see Commons:Hirtle chart as well as a detailed definition of "publication" for public art. Note that it may still be copyrighted in jurisdictions that do not apply the rule of the shorter term for US works (depending on the date of the author's death), such as Canada (50 p.m.a.), Mainland China (50 p.m.a., not Hong Kong or Macao), Germany (70 p.m.a.), Mexico (100 p.m.a.), Switzerland (70 p.m.a.), and other countries with individual treaties.
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