Weighty people can't sing.  Sometimes we have fed ourselves on a diet so high with the calories of ourselves and our own talents that we no longer have room to stomach God.  Sure, we may still wow the cognoscenti with our songs but never in a way that we can move the average listener into greater holiness in Jesus Christ.  It is one thing to be entertained by a song, yet it is quite another to be transformed by God though the ministry of a song.  Sometimes this is why God allows us to suffer.  Suffering has a way of shedding the extra pounds of self-reliance.  Being more efficient than any spiritual Jenny Craig can ever do, suffering is the most efficient way to trim our stomachs so that we will only crave for God and God alone.  And out of such a hunger for the Almighty, this is when the Holy Spirit sings through us.  It's hard not to miss the presence of God's Spirit when Karen Hornsby sings.  Listening to what is her debut eponymous record where Hornsby co-wrote or wrote all the songs, you can't help but feel the presence of God singing along in heart-tumbling ways as she sings.  

Karen Hornsby has seen her share of suffering.  In her CD booklet, she details her trials in what sounds like a Twenty First Century story of Job.  When Hornsby was still a teenager at the age of nineteen, her car collided with a semi-trailer, causing it to explode into flames.  After ten minutes of being surrounded by smoke and flames, every form of help was futile.  Then a miracle happened:  after seven failed attempts to open the door, God suddenly imbued the off-duty police officer with just the right amount of strength to pull Hornsby out of burning car.  Like falling dominos more adversity tumbles. In 2005 her husband was diagnosed with cancer.  In the same year, without giving her much of a breathing room, her perfectly healthy two year-old daughter had brain cancer.  And as if that was not tragic enough, their daughter lost her eyesight the day after the cancer diagnosis.  Currently she is not able to communicate and she has serious mobility issues.  Instead of distancing herself from God after such a chronicle of mishaps, Hornsby turned to Jesus Christ with a tenacious faith.

You will hear about her struggles throughout the record.  It's challenge not to fight back the tears when she sings on the ballad "It's O.K." lines like: "It's O.K. when you find yourself crying day by day/You have prayed and prayed and nothing ever changes/You're frustrated."  Be prepared to brawl your eyes out when you look at the photo of her little two year-old daughter on the last night before she became permanently blind and listen as Hornsby sings the album closing track "It's Me."  The meaning of "It's Me" is double layered.  On one level, this song is a heart wrenching testimony of a mother struggling to take care of her blind and immobile daughter.  "I can take her by the hand and she knows it's me/I can whisper her name and she knows it's me."  On a deeper level, Hornsby is singing from the purview of God the Father taking care of His shivering daughter shaken by the storms of life.  And when the song closes with a children's choir singing the hymn "'Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus" you just can't stop praying for God to have mercy on those who are suffering. 

Yet, not every song is sullen with grief.  Hornsby realizes that though God has armed us so that we might walk through our trails not without pain but always without stain.  And that arsenal God has entrusted to us is His Son; thus, on a worship ballad like "I Surrender" you hear Hornsby soaring with lots of long holding notes as she calls upon Jesus to fight the battle for us.  Similarly, despite the pain she has had felt, she could get on her feet grooving with that old school Motown funk on the upbeat "Celebrate."  She evens gets into some trendy Auto-sounding electronic dance steps on the faith affirming "All Things Are Possible."  These songs tell a survivor story you won't see on reality TV.  They are the products of a daughter of the King who has packed her diet with high doses of Jesus Christ.   So that when she sings, the Holy Spirit ministers.