The story behind this recording is both very short, and also quite long. On the one hand, the entire project was conceived, planned, written and recorded in the span of just two months. Very short indeed! But there is also a story behind that story. It’s a story of consecration, covenant love, and spiritual union, which spans almost a decade now…

Laura and I fell in love somewhat by accident while leading worship together as friends. Right from the start, we had a chemistry that went far beyond the music. We explored this chemistry further in that season by building a deep friendship through long conversations over coffee about the one great passion which we had in common: our love for Christ.

It wasn’t long before we exchanged vows and entered into a lifelong covenant with one another. With each passing year, playing music and leading worship became steadily less and less primary priorities in our lives. Despite this development however, our love of music never waned, nor did our devotion to worship. These passions simply found different expressions to suit each different season. Listening to music together during car rides remained a favorite pastime, and worship transformed into something much deeper for both of us than simply singing songs in corporate gatherings. Worship became for us a lifestyle, not an event or an activity, but a moment by moment choice, something deeply personal and intimate, costly and precious.

Throughout this journey of beginning to discover what it means to truly surrender our entire selves to God as living sacrifices and to live by faith out of (as well as more deeply into) the reality of our union with Him, we have been richly helped by the writings of men and women from days past whom we have come to trust almost as personal companions and mentors; the Desert Fathers and Mothers, A. W. Tozer, Major W. Ian Thomas, Frank Laubach, Jeanne Guyon, Watchman Nee, Norman Grubb, Brother Lawrence, Evelyn Underhill, Handley Moule, and many others. In some ways this recording is a tribute to these great men and women of the faith who sought to preserve for us many neglected aspects of the full apostolic Gospel in all of its life-transforming glory. We are much indebted to these older bothers and sisters who comprise the “great cloud of witnesses” about us, and we recorded this project full of a sense of their presence with us in Christ.

As to the most recent part of the story, Laura had the idea in late February of this year to record music together as a way of celebrating her upcoming 30th birthday. While we were both immediately enthusiastic about the idea, we also quickly realized that we had not written any music in some time, and had nothing to record, while the birthday was only two short months away. As we began to discuss possibilities for a recording project, the concept for “always, only” was very quickly realized. We decided to pick a small handful of fairly unknown hymns which spoke of the spiritual realities we had so eagerly been discovering and experiencing in this season, and put them to new music which we hoped we would be able to write, despite our limited timeframe.

Laura selected Take My Life and Let it Be by Frances Ridley Havergal, and There’s a Man in the Glory by Mary E. McDonough, while I chose A Mind at Perfect Peace with God by Horatius Bonar (retitled Perfect Peace for this recording) and None of Self and All of Thee by Theodore Monod. We also decided to include an instrumental piece which I had begun writing at the beginning of my walk with Christ almost ten years ago, and which was originally written around a theme in the same vein as those of the selected hymns, inspired by a story from the Desert Fathers. The final touch was to include the closing words of Handley Moule’s Morning “Act of Faith,” which have become so precious to us:

“The Lord is my Keeper. Amen.”

With our songs selected, we set off to write the music, almost entirely in the tired hours of the night after putting our two small children to bed. The melodies and harmonies flowed naturally out of our hearts as we sought to give these long-forgotten words fresh expression. Despite the fact that we were (and still are) both sorely out of practice musically, the songs seemed to almost write themselves. The process was at once both joyfully worshipful and somberly contemplative, culminating in the moment when we entered the brand new and unfinished studio space of our dear friend Sam Westhoff and put the songs to tape—live, in one take.

As much as we would have loved to take our time with this project, to make it “more” or “better,” we couldn’t escape the feeling that there was something important about the act of “just doing it”—recording and releasing it, as is, mistakes and all. It’s not polished. It’s far from perfect. It’s raw, it’s honest, it’s vulnerable. It’s us, singing simply but boldly of the One who has become our Life. Perhaps this little project will prove to be the first seedling of something more substantial and more fully realized in the future, or perhaps not. Our only aspiration for this recording is that it bless the heart of our Lord, and possibly the hearts of a few of His other grateful children along the way. It was a blessing to us simply to co-labor in its creation. We commit it back into His hands.

The Lord is our Keeper.

Amen.

Seth and Laura ~ Happy Thieves


*click on the tracks above to read the unique stories behind each one.