Andrew Peterson stories

I've been a huge Andrew Peterson fan ever since my friend Carolyn introduced me to him a few years ago. His album The Far Country is one of my most played ever-- it's all about Heaven, and I love that! I have to be honest, I don't think he has the most amazing voice ever (something that initially put me off), but the stories he tells and the depths of his insight into the Christian life are incredible. And he's an amazing musician.

So anyway, I got to see him in concert last night! He's doing a series of free concerts to promote his latest CD, Resurrection Letters Volume II. And he was playing at Park Street! And I even got to go to the concert with Carolyn, who moved to Boston a couple weeks ago (how cool is that?)

It was such a great concert. He played through the whole album, telling stories along the way of where the songs came from, the Scripture and minor revelations behind the songs, and also being hilariously funny along the way. He is such a gifted storyteller, in song and not in song. (He is actually writing a series of kids' fantasy novels right now!) I loved the story he told of his friend who died at 29 and was buried in a Superman costume (actually, it's better than that-- he wanted to be buried in a suit with his hands pulling his shirt back from his chest to reveal the Superman costume underneath)-- and this young man's hope of Heaven and his resurrected body. I literally could not stop laughing when he showed a picture of his parents posed as American Gothic (apparently they were not only game but said, "Well, son, we don't even have to change clothes-- we're dressed like that right now!")-- and said that it amazed him how his mother looked more like George Washington every year (I was kind of in shock that he said it, but really, it was a striking resemblance!)

But my favorite story was one he told about his song Queen of Iowa, on The Far Country. I've never understood what the song was about, so I've never really liked it. Joel and I speculated that it was about his wife, but that didn't seem right-- I just couldn't figure out what it was talking about. So here's the story. A woman named Jodi was brutally raped back in the early 1990s and contracted AIDS. She got married to a man who had known and loved her before, and married knowing her she had AIDS. (As far as I know he is still not infected.) So much of their marriage he has been her caregiver, and a few years ago she started to get seriously ill. She and her husband weren't Christians, but the churches in their town (Sioux City, Iowa) heard about them and started reaching out, taking them meals and such, and Jodi and her husband became Christians.

Andrew Peterson was asked to perform a private concert for Jodi in her living room when she was very close (so it was thought) to death. She hadn't been conscious for a week (I think she was heavily sedated by drugs) and she was lying on her living room couch, but they did the concert, and partway through she woke up. She was able to talk a little bit-- about the goodness of Jesus. At this point she was having massive complications from AIDS, tumors in her brain so large the doctors had no explanation for why she was still alive, and all the other horrible things that go with late-stage AIDS. But she and her husband were full of joy.

A few years later AP was able to see her again, and she was still alive-- although this time she had been in a drug-induced coma for three months. The doctors swore that she was essentially brain dead, but her husband was sure that he could feel her moving her little finger. The doctors told him he was wrong. AP talked with her and held her hand and was also sure that she was moving her little finger. She was lying on the same couch and again he played a private concert for her, and again, midway through, she woke up!! He said it was like watching someone come up through layers of water, she kind of gasped, but then was there. I don't think she was able to speak this time but she motioned for a piece of paper and wrote on it (her hands clawed, another symptom of late-stage AIDS)-- I believe in the invisible God. (This became a song on his new album.) And as he played songs that she had only heard during her 3 months as a supposed vegetable, she mouthed the words. Amazing.

Needless to say, now I love the song!

I couldn't find an online video of Queen of Iowa, but here is a video of another song I love.