Behind The Song with NRT’s Kevin Davis
#532 – “Dark Days, Darker Nights”
Tedashii shares about this particular page from his real and raw journal from the past year.
Source: http://www.newreleasetuesday.com/article.php?article_id=1354
Tedashii said in an interview, “A little over a year ago, I lost my one year old son. In his passing, honestly I just wanted to quit life, not necessarily feelings or thoughts of suicide, but just, I don’t want to live again, I don’t want to go another day without him. It took a while for me to get to a place that I could express what I felt but once I got to that place, this album is what began to come out.”
On the other side of that tragedy, similar to what Job experienced in the Bible, Tedashii released his album Below Paradise, which is filled with his personal prayers and processing of his relationship with God, and how he is completely relying on Him to show mercy and grace to his family in their time of pain and suffering. One of the standout tracks is “Dark Days, Darker Nights” featuring Britt Nicole.
Knowing Tedashii’s extremely emotional and moving story behind this song has made listening and singing along with him an incredible experience and profession of faith in the face of tragedy and death. This song is a powerful reminder for the believer that we are not meant for this world, but to live with God eternally in Heaven. I had the chance to speak with Tedashii about the song.
Please tell me the personal story behind this song.
This song depicts the early on goings of my emotional state and my mental state when it came to the loss of my son which was the worst day of my life. The loss of my son changed me forever. I experienced grief and sorrow to the depth of my soul. The veil was lifted, the smoke cleared and all I had was pain. Instantly phrases like, “It’s all good” or “It’ll be ok” were cliché and, at best, empty promises.
The comfort of life with no pain was gone and I saw the world in an entirely new way. I felt forsaken, alone, and in a place of darkness that has been kept masked by a focus on only the good side of this life. The reality of being a Christian and suffering so harsh a thing was hard for me to grasp. The song is about the different ways with which I tried to cope and exist within this unwanted new normal. It really was a song I wrote around the time everything happened and was my plea and vent to the Lord in a way of me trying to make sense of everything.
Which Bible verses connect to the message of the song?
Titus 1:1 (The Voice): Paul, servant of God and emissary of Jesus, the Anointed One, on behalf of the faith that is accepted by God’s chosen people and the knowledge of the undeniable truth that leads to godliness.
Isaiah 41:13 (The Voice): After all, it is I, the Eternal One your God, who has hold of your right hand, Who whispers in your ear, “Don’t be afraid. I will help you.”
Psalm 145:9 (NLT): The Lord is good to everyone. He showers compassion on all His creation.
What is the takeaway message?
That Titus 1 verse that “God is not a liar” had to become true for me in relation to all the other things that I know to be true about the Lord. He is love. He is kind. He does consider us. Psalm 145 tells us that the Lord is good to everyone. Isaiah 41 tells us that that God has hold of your hand, and fear not. He will help you. Those passages are huge for me. I need to remind myself of those words and when you read things like that in the midst of tragedy and suffering, you tend to dismiss them to some extent. You know that those things have potential to be truth in some way at some point in life meant something to your soul. In the moment it is difficult to grasp.
Titus 1 really helped as I understood that God is true to His Word. Thus, He is true to us. This album is my journal over the last year and a half of my life. It is shared publicly with all of you during this difficult journey as I worked to understand all I felt, experienced, and believed. I am human, I am hurt. I am His. By His grace I am what I am. I pray this will be an album all can feel, even if you can’t relate, and be moved to true emotions about the reality of life in a harsh world with a loving God, and walking in that reality below Paradise. For the believer, God is love and God is good. We expect those things to be the bulk of our existence, if not the entirety of it. For the non-believer, they are oblivious to that, but expect some idea of a happy ending, if you will. While love and goodness is a reality for some, for many that is not the case. When I look at the news, and when I’m talking with people across the country, I come across individuals who relate to me. They may not have specifically lost a child, but they can relate to pain, suffering and heartache. In my life, I didn’t pay as much attention to suffering as I thought I did until I actually suffered. I realized that there was a reality that I was ignoring and I hope to bring that to people’s attention.
Lyrics:
My pain is real
Don’t pretend you can feel
I appreciate your prayers, but I’m keeping it real
Kitchen and skitching I’m gripping the steel
Hand in my pain, and let’s keep it concealed
Mad at the world, and I’m ready to kill
Hollering pain, and they letting me live
Making me sick, and they calling me ill
The mood that I’m in, I die to the fear
No lie, testify
Left hand on the Bible, right hand to the sky
My days be long, nights seem long
Calling on help and nobody is home
All by myself, and I feel so alone
Cold world, yeah, and I know it’s for show
Worst day of my life, and it’s just getting badder
Asking Him why and looking for answers
Dark days and darker nights
Heart break dreams from this heartened mind
Don’t understand it
Can’t understand it
Bombay and that Alizé
Purple Sprite with that Grand Marnier
Sip, slurp, sizzurp, hurl
Do it again the same next day
Hey, marijuana, ganja
Blown crop dust like I was a farmer
Mary Jane that dame I called her
Invested my home and living with roaches
Womanizing, traumatizing
The reason that made me despise me
My Savior’s bringing them gifts
Presented as wise men trying to entice them
Liars all wired up
By the men before but I was the first
But this is no race or wretch
A mess and I’m trying to find help
Looking at pictures it making me sadder
Feeling so helpless it making me madder
Worst day of my life, and it’s just getting badder
Asking Him why and looking for answers
Wondering if He ever gonna come back
If He is then man can you pick up the slack
Cause this place that I’m in I may never come back
Feeling so lost and don’t know where I’m at
Uh, I pick up on a sign quick
I don’t know what I could find if
Someone could get me out the mess I’m in
Brain loss, gone and all its sin
I know I’m hurting from my past pain
And people tell me I goin’ insane
I think they lying so I keep pressing
The way things I used to do, trying to impress em’
This pain, I gotta let it go
Like David and Job in the Bible, offer God your heart and your life as you sing along with this great song. David processed his grieving through the Psalms that he wrote which are guides that God gives us on how He desires our prayers to be conversations with Him, like this song. That’s how the Lord draws us closer to Him. Despite the fact that we don’t understand pain and suffering we know for sure that God is the same yesterday, today and forever.
God included the book of Job as a reminder of how He wants us to handle trials. In that Scripture, Satan is testing God’s servant, Job, to see if he can cause him to lose his faith by causing him pain and suffering. Job’s friends counsel him that he must have un-repented sins that are causing him the calamities of losing his family and his health.
That’s our challenge when we lift our hands in praise and rely on God during our own “Dark Days, Darker Nights.” This song is an encouragement to remember that we need to live each day knowing that despite circumstances, God has a plan for “those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). Amen to that!