DAVID ADAMS speaks to Australian singer/songwriter Bel Thomson about how her own journey with God inspired her latest album, Seasons…
Australian singer, songwriter and musician, Bel Thomson, and her husband Phil have had their share of ups and down in the past few years – some amazing times watching God move and some really hard times in which their faith was challenged – so it’s probably not surprising that her latest album, appropriately named Seasons, reflects that journey.
“When I look at the songs that appear on the album, it feels as though they’ve been written through all the different ups and downs and the different seasons of my own life in the last few years,” says Ms Thomson, who released the album – her fourth – last month. “It feels like, metaphorically, we have walked through the seasons of life.”
Bel Thomson. PICTURE: Supplied.
The ‘summer’ period – which occurred when Ms Thomson and her husband, who manages bookings and preaches when they’re visiting churches or conferences, were touring the country on the back of her previous album A New Creation and “seeing God doing amazing stuff” – was followed by a ministry pause after one of their mentors warned them they were starting to see some signs of burn-out and suggested a sabbatical – a suggestion the couple decided to take on.
“It was just a time of rest and replenishment,” recalls the 37-year-old, who is based in Brisbane where the family attend Springwood Church of Christ (where Ms Thomson leads worship). “It was, I suppose, like an autumn season of just waiting. And, for me, I felt like I learned to worship again, off the platform…”
“When I look at the songs that appear on the album, it feels as though they’ve been written through all the different ups and downs and the different seasons of my own life in the last few years.”
– Bel Thomson.
The season that was to follow was the hardest, however.
“We fell pregnant with our first child and we were so excited and we had expected there would be a quick return to spring and summer…” Ms Thomson recalls. “We had a great pregnancy but I suppose nothing can really prepare you for the challenge of being a new parent and I really struggled with post-natal depression after Mikey was born… I just never thought that would be my story.”
While they still don’t know exactly why, Michael wasn’t breathing when he was delivered in an emergency Caesarian section and was taken straight into the special care nursery.
“I wasn’t able to hold him or nurse him or even see him when he was born,” Ms Thomson recalls. “I start to get emotional even when I think about it now. So when I first saw Mikey, I felt like I was looking at someone else’s child because he was hooked up to all sorts of monitors and I could only put my hand through the little window [of the special crib] to stroke his head. I just felt really heart-broken that I couldn’t hold him and really mourned that separation while he was away from me in the special care nursery.”
Ms Thomson says that while, on the one hand, she was grateful her son was alive and healthy, “on the other hand it was like I just got lost in this blackness that lasted for months and months and months” as well as being overwhelmed by all the challenges of having a newborn baby.
“So, for us, that was a very unexpected start of a winter season and, honestly, I felt let down by God because I had prayed for and expected a very different experience,” she says.
The journey through that experience was a tough one – “if you told me 18 months ago that I would be releasing an album now, I would have told you, you were crazy,” says Ms Thomson – but she recalls a key moment a couple a months after Mikey’s birth which started the journey out of it. During a visit to her obstetrician, she had explained how she remained upset over the circumstances of Mikey’s birth, but the doctor explained that while she may not have been able to hold her son at that time, God has been holding him the whole time.
“Song-writing became very cathartic and actually a part of my own healing and you’ll hear on the album several of the songs that I feel have come from a deeper place than any songs that I’ve written before as I worked through my own grief and my own depression…”
“That really helped me to start to reframe the way I saw it and to feel thankful and confident to know God was holding my son when I couldn’t. And that is, I suppose, what I want to remember throughout Mikey’s life, [especially] if there’s other times when I can’t be there to help him…to know that he is in God’s care and has been all along.”
With some counseling and a lot of support from family and her church, Ms Thomson says she was able to “work through” the post-natal depression. And song-writing was a key part of that journey.
“Song-writing became very cathartic and actually a part of my own healing and you’ll hear on the album several of the songs that I feel have come from a deeper place than any songs that I’ve written before as I worked through my own grief and my own depression…[But] never did a I think at the time that this was going to be outworked in an album, certainly not so soon.”
Looking back, Ms Thomson says it was when Mikey, who is now 20-months-old and “such a delight”, was aged about six months that she started to sense God telling her she should record a new album – an idea she at first resisted.
“But I had got to the point where I was finding time again regularly in God’s Word; I was finding time to spend with Him and I just kept feeling in that time like He was saying ‘There’ll be songs that you’ve written in your ‘winter’ which are not meant just for you and just for your own healing; these are actually meant to help other people through their winter seasons’.”
She and her husband began to pray about it and the idea was confirmed when she was taken to Isaiah 40 which opens with a series of verses on the idea of God’s comfort for His people. But she still had questions over how to juggle motherhood and record an album, a process she knew from past experience was a “huge endeavour”.
For her, the answer lay further down in that Bible chapter where it speaks of God “gently” leading those that have young.
“For me, that was a promise that if we would embark on it, He would show me how it would be possible,” Ms Thomson recalls.
Bel Thomson and her husband Phil. PICTURE: Supplied
So they took “a step of faith” and Ms Thomson says that looking back now, she can testify to God’s faithfulness in that He did lead her just as He had promised.
“For our family, the recording of this album has been a wonderful experience. It’s been healing, not only for me, but for our whole family, and I think that is something that is woven in the very fabric of the album. It has come out of our rough journey and also has been, as we’ve recorded it, the outworking of our healing and I think that you can sense that as you listen to the album. So I’m excited to see what God does with it.”
“For our family, the recording of this album has been a wonderful experience. It’s been healing, not only for me, but for our whole family, and I think that is something that is woven in the very fabric of the album. It has come out of our rough journey and also has been, as we’ve recorded it, the outworking of our healing and I think that you can sense that as you listen to the album. So I’m excited to see what God does with it.”
While Ms Thomson, who recorded the album – including a collaboration with Nathan Tasker – in Nashville where she worked with Grammy-nominated producer Ed Cash, says while she is touring with the new album, doing so does look different from before. This includes taking one of Mikey’s grandmothers with them when they tour so he can be looked after while they’re performing.
“Really our whole approach to ministry now is we do it together as a family,” she says. “And he travels really well – he loves it. As we do what we’re called to…we’re always looking to make that a fun and positive experience for him. So bringing a grandmother is part of that and doing fun stuff while we’re on tour is part of that as well.”
She says that while there have been times during the journey since Mikey’s birth when all she could see “was the impossibility”, as they’ve stepped into what God has called them to do, He has “made it possible”.
“We definitely want to keep doing what we we do. I feel like this is a ‘God call’ on my life and it’s a matter for us of being mindful in each season of how we’re travelling.”
Ms Thomson says the new album’s title track really sums up the experience of her family in the past few years.
“For me it sums up the whole album – that God really has been faithful through the changing seasons of my life…I’m so thankful for the anchor of faithfulness through all the changes that life brings.”
Seasons is out now. For more, see www.belthomson.com.
