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Musican Marie Bellet recently released her fourth CD, which, like her others, is a beautiful blend of bluegrass and her own light acoustic style and features lyrics that celebrate the everyday life of families striving for holiness in the modern world. One More Soul recently asked Marie some questions about her faith, her family, and her music.
Marie, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your family?
I am a stay-at-home mother with eight sons and one daughter from 19 years to 10 months. I did not begin writing songs until I was in my mid thirties, pregnant with my sixth child and only girl. I had one-year-old twins, bad veins, and no one to talk to! Although I had always loved singing, it took a lot of stress to finally get me to write. I knew I was doing what was right, yet the challenge of raising a large family in a world that seemed to reject sacrifice and motherhood got me thinking. I found that I had so much to say and that I could hardly contain myself once I got started!
Now, can you tell us a little about your fourth and newest CD, “A New Springtime”?
Do you ever just get sick of yourself? All of the rumination over your petty little problems, all of the small-minded gossip and manipulation we are all subjected to in our comfortable circles?
These songs are about being bored with the self-focus that it is so easy to lapse into when you stay at home. John Paul II promised that a New Springtime was coming for the Church. I was trying to reach for that hope of overcoming the little prisons we build for ourselves.
Do you have a favorite song from this CD?
I always like the dark introspective songs so I am partial to Secret Garden - a song about how we try to resist the transformative power of suffering but in the end are surprised to find Christ in the midst of it.
We really loved your song “Nine Months One More Time.” Will you tell us more about this?
Well, this song is pretty literally my experience. My youngest child was in Kindergarten and I was alone in the house for the first time in 17 years, contemplating the departure of my eldest the next year and all I could do was cry. I cried so much I thought I must be in menopause. Apparently not! I had been told that this was potentially a fatal pregnancy so it was a scary time—one of those times when you are so over your head that you fall back in love with God and just let it go.
Marie, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your family?
I am a stay-at-home mother with eight sons and one daughter from 19 years to 10 months. I did not begin writing songs until I was in my mid thirties, pregnant with my sixth child and only girl. I had one-year-old twins, bad veins, and no one to talk to! Although I had always loved singing, it took a lot of stress to finally get me to write. I knew I was doing what was right, yet the challenge of raising a large family in a world that seemed to reject sacrifice and motherhood got me thinking. I found that I had so much to say and that I could hardly contain myself once I got started!
Now, can you tell us a little about your fourth and newest CD, “A New Springtime”?
Do you ever just get sick of yourself? All of the rumination over your petty little problems, all of the small-minded gossip and manipulation we are all subjected to in our comfortable circles?
These songs are about being bored with the self-focus that it is so easy to lapse into when you stay at home. John Paul II promised that a New Springtime was coming for the Church. I was trying to reach for that hope of overcoming the little prisons we build for ourselves. Do you have a favorite song from this CD?
I always like the dark introspective songs so I am partial to Secret Garden - a song about how we try to resist the transformative power of suffering but in the end are surprised to find Christ in the midst of it.
We really loved your song “Nine Months One More Time.” Will you tell us more about this?
Well, this song is pretty literally my experience. My youngest child was in Kindergarten and I was alone in the house for the first time in 17 years, contemplating the departure of my eldest the next year and all I could do was cry. I cried so much I thought I must be in menopause. Apparently not! I had been told that this was potentially a fatal pregnancy so it was a scary time—one of those times when you are so over your head that you fall back in love with God and just let it go.
In that song, one line that intrigued me was “I didn’t know how hardened I’d become.” Could you tell me a little bit more about this line?
Often we tell ourselves that we are doing God’s will when we are pretty much just doing what we wanted anyway. Not only that, but we have figured out how to minimize our vulnerability to each other and keep things smooth. This happens in marriages all of the time—you stop dealing with the other person and you navigate around. Intensity slowly dies out and you tell yourselves that you have matured, when actually you have simply glazed over, or maybe toughened up. You don’t listen anymore. You become unaware of your need for each other. How a baby changes all of that! Suddenly you are vulnerable again because you are going to need each other to rise to the occasion. That is why contraception is so destructive to marriages. When everything feels under control, we don’t see the good in the other person. It is need that helps us to see the good in others and in the world.
How in the world do you fit in time to write and sing as a busy wife and mother of nine?
I don’t. I only write every now and then, when it comes to me. I write in the midst of everything going on. In fact, I often start a clean up or organization project when I am writing. Somehow doing two different things and not quite focusing helps the song take shape. However, the fine tuning on certain words or phrases becomes downright obsessive! Then it doesn’t matter what I am doing because I am tuning everything else out. I go on the road to sing only every now and then -- and it is a fun break. Usually I try to get in and out of town within 24 hours on a weekend so my husband can watch the kids. My concerts and talks are pretty much “off the cuff” and I never know what I am going to say till I get there. My main problem is remembering all of the words to my songs, since I only sing when I am doing a show.
Big question…How has being a mother
changed you?
I shudder to think of what I was like before I was a mother. Just boring and self-absorbed, I guess. I am a lot more organized and a lot less worried about what other people think. I don’t feel I have to cover up who I am—in fact I feel I have to be more myself for the sake of my kids. God made me their mother, so the hardened phony career woman routine doesn’t work. I am supposed to give them my understanding, empathy, hope, humor, blood and guts.
The most surprising song on this CD for me was “Are You Ready, Freddy?” It has a different feel from the others. I have some ideas of what it’s about, but can you tell us?
That song is about a unilateral attempt to try again in marriage. My husband is a marriage counselor, and he says that couples are always whining that the other guy just won’t give them what they want and is ruining their life. He tells them that if at least one of the two makes a sincere effort to serve the other one and be vulnerable, there is always hope. Staying in love is very risky personally. You have to be strong enough to stay open to love and life.
There is a vulnerability in your songs; you tell it like it is. You share not only your joys and breakthroughs but also your struggles and frustrations—with your husband, your children, yourself. What makes you willing to open up like this?
Often we tell ourselves that we are doing God’s will when we are pretty much just doing what we wanted anyway. Not only that, but we have figured out how to minimize our vulnerability to each other and keep things smooth. This happens in marriages all of the time—you stop dealing with the other person and you navigate around. Intensity slowly dies out and you tell yourselves that you have matured, when actually you have simply glazed over, or maybe toughened up. You don’t listen anymore. You become unaware of your need for each other. How a baby changes all of that! Suddenly you are vulnerable again because you are going to need each other to rise to the occasion. That is why contraception is so destructive to marriages. When everything feels under control, we don’t see the good in the other person. It is need that helps us to see the good in others and in the world.
How in the world do you fit in time to write and sing as a busy wife and mother of nine?
I don’t. I only write every now and then, when it comes to me. I write in the midst of everything going on. In fact, I often start a clean up or organization project when I am writing. Somehow doing two different things and not quite focusing helps the song take shape. However, the fine tuning on certain words or phrases becomes downright obsessive! Then it doesn’t matter what I am doing because I am tuning everything else out. I go on the road to sing only every now and then -- and it is a fun break. Usually I try to get in and out of town within 24 hours on a weekend so my husband can watch the kids. My concerts and talks are pretty much “off the cuff” and I never know what I am going to say till I get there. My main problem is remembering all of the words to my songs, since I only sing when I am doing a show.
Big question…How has being a mother
changed you?
I shudder to think of what I was like before I was a mother. Just boring and self-absorbed, I guess. I am a lot more organized and a lot less worried about what other people think. I don’t feel I have to cover up who I am—in fact I feel I have to be more myself for the sake of my kids. God made me their mother, so the hardened phony career woman routine doesn’t work. I am supposed to give them my understanding, empathy, hope, humor, blood and guts.
The most surprising song on this CD for me was “Are You Ready, Freddy?” It has a different feel from the others. I have some ideas of what it’s about, but can you tell us?
That song is about a unilateral attempt to try again in marriage. My husband is a marriage counselor, and he says that couples are always whining that the other guy just won’t give them what they want and is ruining their life. He tells them that if at least one of the two makes a sincere effort to serve the other one and be vulnerable, there is always hope. Staying in love is very risky personally. You have to be strong enough to stay open to love and life.
There is a vulnerability in your songs; you tell it like it is. You share not only your joys and breakthroughs but also your struggles and frustrations—with your husband, your children, yourself. What makes you willing to open up like this?
Phony is boring, and I don’t have the energy to pull it off anyway. Besides, I think it is uncharitable, woman-to-woman, to try to gloss things over. Some Christian women are cowed into thinking that if they were really holy they would not have troubles, so they isolate themselves to put on a good show. Absurd! We
are also led to believe that we have a right not to suffer, serve, or sacrifice and that the really smart people make that work and are wildly happy and free as a consequence. Outrageous! If I have to admit to my own weaknesses to reach out to other lonely women, that is fine with me. There is no love without sacrifice, and there is no heaven without love.In your 2003 album “Lighten Up,” you have a song called “One More Soul” that we have taken as kind’ve our theme song. It is about how a child, “one more soul, one more voice for the heavenly choir” is the greatest gift of God but a gift that our hearts have to be unselfish and trusting enough to accept. How, as a mother of a large family, have you observed in others and/or experienced in yourself these hurdles to accepting another child and the overcoming of these hurdles?
The true realization that we are not in control brings us closer to Christ. Nothing teaches that like having kids! Some try to minimize their risk by keeping their family small but the truth is, from the moment of conception you are in over your head and suddenly subject to so much pain. There really isn’t any way of getting around it, no matter what happens to that child, the mother is forever changed.
Another big question…If there was just one message that you could convey to women everywhere, what would it be?
Love your children forgive your husband, laugh at yourself.
Do you feel that your music – both the lyrics and melody – have changed in substantial ways since your first CD? If so, how?
They probably have changed as my role has changed. When I started to write, I was inundated with little kid stuff and much more worried about how to get through the day. Now I write more about the misleading messages in the culture of death—the self-absorbed, control-oriented style of dealing with each other—even our kids—fighting discouragement; fighting the materialism of seeing people as things, as agents who are here only to serve our needs, learning how to forgive. I am ten years older now and have five teenage sons. I worry more about protecting my children from the more subtle and degrading messages of our culture than I worry about the misleading messages about marriage and motherhood.
Also, I think when you are younger your temptations have more to do with pride—getting over yourself and giving to others. When you are older your temptations have more to do with maintaining hope—you see that things and people don’t turn out the way you thought they would. As the years go by, reality and forgiveness are the rule of the day. The challenge is to know the truth and love the truth. It sounds simple and it would be if we were simple. But unraveling all of our self deceptions can be a life’s work!
A New
Springtime
Springtime
An Interview with Marie Bellet
