The day I had dreamed of for months was finally here. 

As Scott and I hiked among Colorado’s jagged peaks, embraced by the cool mountain air, my heart swelled with awe at our surroundings. This, however, wasn’t just a vacation, a break from reality, or a chance to hike in my happy place. This was a pilgrimage, and the best was yet to come.

It all began six months earlier with a single Instagram post: Brandi Carlile, performing at Red Rocks Amphitheatre with the Colorado Symphony. Two bucket list items in one. I had to go. 

I’m a late comer to Brandi’s talent. She’s been performing since the early 2000s, but it wasn’t until our soon-to-be pastor mentioned Brandi Carlile in a children’s sermon just two years ago that I looked her up. Part country, part folk, part rock n’ roll. Like Brandi herself, her music genre refuses to fit neatly into a mold.

• After listening to my first Brandi song (“The Story”), I was hooked, and my playlist was suddenly all Brandi all the time.
  
• “Have you ever wandered lonely through the woods?” connected to the peace I feel walking among the trees.
  
• Next it was “Looking Out” which so tenderly captures the truth that, while people may draw lines of who’s in and who’s out of God’s family, God welcomes all. 
  
• Then, there’s The Joke, that voices my frustration at the callous indifference so many Americans display toward tired and fearful refugees. 
  
• Of her song “Sinners, Saints, and Fools,” Brandi says that for Jesus it’s “not love the feeling, but love the action. And I subscribe. I follow. Anything you like about me, it’s because of that.”

I could go on and on about the power and kinship found in her lyrics, but when I read Carlile’s book dedication to her memoir Broken Horses, I knew I had found a kindred spirit: 

Most of all [to] the family of fellow misfits on the island of misfit toys. [To] anyone who’s been rejected by this realm and its interpretation of your faith, but never by your Creator. To the repulsed, rejected, reformed, reaffirmed, the redeemed. Your immeasurable worth precedes you.

Hiking in the mountains the day before the concert, I shared with Scott that I was nervous for the big day. I had built this concert up in my head for so long. I had been listening to Brandi’s albums on repeat so I could sing every word to every song. 

I had shared with friends that I anticipated heaven and earth to become one, just for the night. I had even told a few friends that I’d return from Colorado with my face glowing like Moses’ after speaking with God on the mountaintop. What if the actual concert didn’t live up to the vision in my head?

The Day Arrives

The morning of our concert, I saw that people had posted clips online from her Friday night performance. I watched her sing one of my favorites, “You and Me on the Rock,” with her wife, Catherine. As I handed the phone to Scott, I walked into the other room and cried.

It was so perfectly beautiful that any fear I had about the concert not living up to my expectations vanished. Scott handed my phone back to me, asking “Are you going to cry all night?”

It only took the strum of a few chords before those tears started flowing. As the orchestra tuned their instruments, Brandi walked out onto the stage to thousands of joyously screaming fans, and before she even opened her mouth to speak, she picked up her guitar and started strumming the slow, soulful notes of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” 

Having read her memoir, I knew the powerful story behind her connection to this song. Brandi writes, “I was drawn back to church when I came out of the closet as both a comfort and out of fear. Church made sense of things…but even still, it took me a long time to collect enough nerve to take the step I was about to take.” 

On the Sunday of her baptism, with friends and family gathered, Brandi’s pastor, who knew her well, said he couldn’t go through with the baptism unless she repented of her homosexuality. She ran out of church that Sunday, but instead of leaving church permanently, she learned the power of grace and forgiveness. In discussing the inspiration behind her album By the Way, I Forgive You, Brandi writes, “I’m talking about radical, filthy, trembling, scary, life-changing, beautiful forgiveness.” 

Unpacking the trauma of that Sunday, Brandi writes, “Looking back on it now, I see grace everywhere. That’s how real ‘heart change’ is made. . .That’s where mercy creeps in: 

It’s not a cry that you hear at night
It’s not somebody who’s seen the light
It’s a cold and it’s a broken
Hallelujah.”

Authentic & Inspiring

It’s this kind of brokenness and radical forgiveness that makes Brandi so authentic. Seeing this woman standing there–knowing her story, her hurt, her rejection–and yet witnessing how she refused to deny her love of Jesus, instead choosing to walk the path of forgiveness, how could I not cry? Listen and try not to cry yourself. 

I think this is part of what makes Brandi so inspiring to so many. My story isn’t her story, but we’ve all experienced wounds at the hands of well-meaning people. We’ve all been pushed aside or felt like an outsider looking in. Brandi, a self-labeled misfit, sings with such ache and vulnerability, such hope and forgiveness, that you can’t help but feel drawn to her music and her vision of gentler life. 

Before the concert started, fans were told to be prepared for her song, “The Joke,” and, depending on their seats, hold up their phones with the appropriate color, provided by a free app, to create a rainbow. As Brandi played the opening chords, fans, arms outstretched, formed a rainbow of glowing lights. 

When she looked out and said, “That is so beautiful,” I felt hopeful, empowered. Nearly ten thousand people were singing a song that honored those too often pushed to the margins. In this age of ugly rhetoric and deeply drawn lines in the sand, we were singing with optimistic confidence.

It was a transcendent moment. In fact, Brandi forgot to cue the symphony before her big note, so she said, “I’m gonna do it again.” And we did. This time, the symphony, Brandi, and all of us soared together on that final high note, united in the determination to be part of a more loving world.

Brandi closed the night singing Queen’s “We Are the Champions.” A song heard countless times took on new meaning. After being surrounded by Brandi’s people, her reminder to “keep on fighting ‘til the end” felt powerful and important.

That night, standing among nearly ten thousand people, I saw a glimpse of heaven. Here were those misfits, those rejected, the redeemed. Others, like me, have found a friend in a woman with a raw, soulful voice, who champions radical inclusion, advocates for racial justice, and sings for the dignity of all people. 

And, yes, my face did shine. I’d been to the mountaintop.