Andrew Peterson is one of Christian music's renaissance men. An avid writer of music and fiction, he has grown a passionate army of supporters. With the release of Resurrection Letters: Prologue, he continues to paint vivid lyrical and musical landscapes.

In celebration of Andrew's work, we collected a number of the quotes and thoughts from his Behind the Song devotionals over the years. 

"Dancing in the Minefields" - 2010

In December of 2009, my wife and I celebrated 15 years of marriage. Fifteen years felt like an accomplishment. It's not forever, but it's long enough to have weathered a few storms and have real history. I'm approaching having been married as long as I was single. A few days later, we got in a silly argument and I wrote this song after she went to bed. I can't even remember what we argued about but there were tears shed and I came downstairs determined to write a song about how right I was... just kidding.

Thinking about it, I don't often want to channel my anger into a song, but I was thinking about how beautiful it has been to spend 15 years with someone who made the same promise I did. Marriage was God's idea. It's one of the most potent metaphors in all of Scripture for the way God loves us and the way we're to let ourselves be loved by Him. But that doesn't mean it's easy. To the contrary, it's fraught with peril. Any good marriage involves a thousand deaths to self. The good news is, in Christ that marriage involves at least as many resurrections. We lay our lives down and enter this perilous dance with another human being who has done the same. Why should we expect to emerge unscathed?
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"Rest Easy" - 2012

One of the biggest things that I struggle to believe about the Gospel is that God is happy with me. I grew up with a legalistic understanding of God's discipline and thinking God didn't like me when I did something wrong. Brennan Manning said that makes no sense, because of Romans 5:8: "But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." 
 
God made the first move. God loves us as we are, not who we should be. The first thing that comes to mind when I struggle with my sins is to think like Adam and Eve and that I want to hide from God. Instead God calls us to an intimacy with Him, like a father has with his kids after discipline. God wants us to rest in Him because His love is unending. 
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"Be Kind to Yourself" - 2015

I was driving home from the studio one night thinking about my little girl Skye, who is twelve years old and just precious and sweet, and also really emotional. Like a lot of girls her age, she's going through changes, and she had a night where she was upset about something. I saw a turn happen where whatever she was upset about turned inward and she was no longer upset about something else, but she was upset with and hard on herself. 

I remember being her age, and I also remember being the age I am now and not liking myself very much, thinking "if only God had made me different, I wouldn't annoy my friends as much." I can be really hard on myself. Seeing it happen with her, it really broke my heart. I was talking with her and told her she needs to be kind to herself, and I prayed with her. When I came to bed, my wife said she hoped I paid attention to the words I said to Skye, because that's what she says to me all the time. 

It was this beautiful moment where I think God ambushed me with this song I wrote for my daughter. I sang it for her and we both cried and all of a sudden I felt God saying to me to pay attention to the love I have for my daughter because that's the love He has for me, only infinitely more.
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