“All the weary world awaits you, when you’re on your own…”

Last year, “All the Weary World” was in my top three streamed songs. I started writing it in the summer of 2009.

15 years ago…long before:

2025: I binged watched Ted Lasso in the basement

2024: I was the “best music cha” ever.

2023: I walked where Jesus walked in Israel

2022: I launched a podcast.

2021: I joined Sanchez Agency

2020: Did as much outdoor gathering as possible.

2019: Assumed the management of a non-profit coffee house.

2018: I turned 40.

2017: I was made a priest.

2016: I was made a deacon.

2015: Joanna was born.

2014: I packed up for Tennessee.

2013: Made beer retail signage at Indiana Beverage.

2012: The Texarkana Two kicked ass every Tuesday night at Duffy’s.

2011: We recorded “All The Weary World” and others at 7spin Studio in Valpo.

2010: I made my O Indiana DIY version, and played it at open mics.

And yet…after all this life, when I play it today for people, I still feel most of the original feels associated with it.

I think about being young, with no money to my name, not sure of my path, career or vocation, a lot of starts and stops, a lot of dreams either died or unfulfilled. I hadn’t learned how to be a better husband yet, I had growth in my role as Dad too that was needed. So much of my self I was unsure of.

In July 2009, I hung out one night with Amy Allen, Adam Roney, Graham Smith, and Jamie Fritze and others at the Porter County Fair while Elizabeth was in Chicago for her Pampered Chef conference.

I biked home, crickets. The kids at my in-laws, the house was empty and hot, windows open. The lights were off, street light weakly filtered in. Normally our house was a busy place, but without the fam, quietness. A feeling of solitude in the middle of vast planet overwhelmed me, after the party atmosphere of hang time with friends.

I grabbed a guitar, sat on the corner of the bed, and recorded a voice memo of the first verse and chorus in the middle of that summer night

It had been on my mind for a while to incorporate the phrase “o’er all the weary world.” It made me choke up one Christmas, singing in church, the heaviness of life upon me, in the carol, “It Came Upon A Midnight Clear.” It’s in the second verse; I have a particular love of traditional Christmas carols.

2 Still through the cloven skies they come 
with peaceful wings unfurled, 
and still their heavenly music floats 
o’er all the weary world; 
above its sad and lowly plains, 
they bend on hovering wing, 
and ever o’er its Babel sounds 
the blessed angels sing.

Could sacred music lift me from my quarter life crisis?

The next verse hit like a freight train. The words made me feel seen and gave hope at the same time.

3 And ye, beneath life’s crushing load, 
whose forms are bending low, 
who toil along the climbing way 
with painful steps and slow, 
look now! for glad and golden hours 
come swiftly on the wing. 
O rest beside the weary road, 
and hear the angels sing!