This evening I will be attending my ninth Switchfoot concert. Nine is a lot of shows, but this one has more in common with that first one than any others I have attended, and I like the symmetry of it. Like the first, this will be an outdoor concert at a festival on a long, hot July day. There will likely be some diehard fans (like myself), but more who heard of free music and show up to see what it is about. Like the first, I will kind of be skipping out on family time to go (today is a holiday so I would likely be with family otherwise, and we skipped part of my cousin’s wedding reception to attend the first—sorry, but I don’t regret it!). There are a lot of differences as well: eleven years is a long time. I was barely a teenager at that first show, and now I am long past adolescence. There have been more Switchfoot albums released since that show than they had released before it. They aren’t the same band anymore, and I’m not the same person anymore—I have doubted my doubts and believed my beliefs and lived hard and loved a lot; Switchfoot has been the soundtrack to it all.
The soundtrack of my transition from childhood to adolescence and from adolescence to adulthood. Of discovering who I am time and time again. Of my struggle with the dueling powers of doubt and faith. More than anything, Switchfoot has been the soundtrack of finding endless, inextinguishable hope in the midst of darkness and doubt and fear.
I started listening when I was 12, a few months before that first show. At a time when I was questioning my beliefs and desperately needed someone to say it was okay to do so, I found reassurance in “Life and Love and Why.” I continued listening to Switchfoot throughout high school. When life seemed hopeless, “The Blues” offered me a somber but strong hope that felt more genuine than anything I had ever encountered. I listened during college. When I encountered a darkness so encompassing it nearly swallowed me whole, “Always,” sung live at a show at the Gillioz Theater, taught me of a love that covered my failures and forgave my sin in a way I hadn’t dared even hope for. I listened at the cusp of adulthood—just two weeks before graduating college, the lead singer sang “Restless” standing in my chair and staring into my eyes. It became a personal challenge to let myself fall, to live truly and deeply, to not let fear stand in my way, to never stop searching. I answered the call of “Restless” and jumped in a trip to Nicaragua to love on some people and learn how to live well, listening to Fading West in its entirety at least once a day on the trip. The album came alive in this beautiful and heart-wrenching place as I drifted off to sleep in a hammock under the light of the moon. I came home and cried when I heard “The World you Want” because Nicaragua is beautiful but the realities are so far from the world I want for my new family there. Switchfoot has been the soundtrack of half of my life; it has shaped me and stretched me and I am so grateful.
“Where I Belong” has been the closing song for over half of the shows I have seen—it is an incredibly beautiful and haunting song about finding home. It gives me hope and inspires me to live a great story. I heard once that when Switchfoot is no more, “Where I Belong” is the last song they will perform. I like that idea. I listen because I would like that song to be the song I sing, the song I live.
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Next week I will return to telling about my Nicaragua trip. I have at least a little more to say about it! Have a of July and be safe everyone!
Megan Leigh 