You have written some very thoughtprovoking lyrics about your life and relationships. Can you tell us a bit about how you first started songwriting, and what gives you inspiration to write?

I had always kept a diary as a child and I’ve always loved music, so I think those two things just naturally fit together. The songwriting bug started off in Junior High with just writing silly meaningless songs about the weather or whichever guy I had crush on at that time and just trying to rhyme words.

It had gradually evolved and I realised that church was the place where I could share my songs (when they were good enough to be shared). So I found myself writing about my faith, the good and the bad, my questions and my longings. I went to a really small church which had a warm and welcoming congregation who knew and loved me so they thought everything I did was wonderful, but I never thought it would go beyond that as I thought it was always going to be my personal hobby that I just did for me and my church.

So it was surprising for me to find out that somebody else with industry credibility thought that they were worth having a wider audience. So I entered a songwriting competition when I was living in LA just after college and that’s how I met the people that would eventually give me a record deal.

As far as what inspires my songs - it’s basically anything and everything. I feel that we limit ourselves when we say that songs must only come from Scripture or that songs must come from theology. I feel that God has given us one big world to live in - and so sometimes I’d be sitting in a subway next to a guy and read the headline on his newspaper and think that would make a good song. Life inspires me and God inspires life, so the sky’s the limit in terms of song ideas.

You have released a new album. It seems that you have progressed from the style you established in Woven And Spun - do you feel that you’ve grown musically over the last years?

I worked with the same producer on the first few records that I did and absolutely loved that experience. I know it’s a kind of cliché for artists to get to their fourth and fifth record and say that ‘I’ve finally found my voice’ and that ‘I can really make a record that is about me’. But I don’t feel like that - the first few records that I made were with a really talented guy called Mark Hammond, where he was absolutely true to my artistry. And he was so great in giving me an arsenal of tools to use as I didn’t know anything about anything.

So after Woven & Spun and several Dove Awards later and, after a lot of wonderful unexpected attention on that record, I just felt that it would be so tempting to do that again and to try and do a Woven & Spun Part 2 - and that it would be easy to do, because at some level, at this stage in your career, you have sort of figured out the formula. You kind of know what you want and what the consumer wants. And you learn how to juggle all that and I thought ‘that is so dangerous’ - even to be thinking about manipulating it in that way.

So the only real answer was to go somewhere else. Parting from my producer, Mark, felt like a divorce. It was so hard and we had gotten so attached to each other creatively. It was a really difficult decision, but he and I knew that it was the right decision. However, working with a producer for this album Brave was terrifying, because my previous producer Mark was very surgical and ‘man over board’ in the way he put a song together. This new producer however was the opposite - he had a casual approach and was such a rock star guy. It was really scary to have such a different creative approach but, in the end, I was so grateful that I took that risk and I would say he has had a large part in how I have evolved musically.

How has your life changed after giving birth to your son Charlie? Was he a great influence on the album?

I don’t know how to describe motherhood or about having a child, except that it felt like a total wreckingball for someone like me whose life is so structured and organized. When you have a child, you are never the same. Your heart is dismantled - and not only did it change my life but also my approach to music. The other thing about becoming a parent is that it makes you realise that you are a distant second place and just an afterthought to this little life. So this has got me writing more songs about other people and their lives - investing in friendships, rather than just focusing on my journey and my relationship with the Lord. Having a baby has made me look at the bigger picture. So, in an indirect way, he has inspired a lot of my songs and has made me want to write in a more honest and intense way.

A few songs on your album seem to focus on quite serious issues; is there one particular event that has made you write these songs? And why?

Well - when I was on tour with another artist, there was this woman on the same tour. She was in charge of sorting out the merchandise. As she was the only other woman on the tour, she decided from the beginning that we should become best friends. She was a difficult person to be around as she was very needy and very intense. She was always trying to be with me and wanted a lot of attention so, in the end, I did what I never should have done and I decided to remove myself and to try to avoid her if I spotted her coming my way.

So the tour ended and I was so grateful that it did. Several months later, someone from the same tour told me that this woman had taken her own life, and hearing that just knocked the wind out of me for a long time. Just that sense of responsibility that I felt - I felt guilty about how I didn’t take the opportunity to be nice to her and I just withheld the arms of Christ, essentially because I was so wrapped up in myself. So the song I wrote called Hold On was written, not necessarily about her, but for her and anyone else who had somehow felt that they had landed in a place in their life where they had no other option and no hope - where they felt that God was just unable to track them down in that really dark corner. So the song itself just talks all about the corners that even we don’t want to go to each other about - into alcoholism, adultery, drugs - but about how the love of God is so fierce that He will pursue us in any dark corner. So that was a really hard song to write and talk about but it contains a really important message.

There was a song on Woven & Spun called I Am, which has been a standout track on the album, and much talked about. Could you explain what you were communicating through the words?

The song is just really about the consistency of who God is and how He is in our lives, how we do so much changing from day to day, from childhood to adolescence, and how in all these stages of our lives we require something different in our relationship with God. The fact is that He doesn’t do any changing and yet he is still able to meet our need. I think this is why the Scripture has so many names for God: Counsellor, Shepherd, Prince Of Peace, King Of Kings. We all desperately need to connect to the different characters of God at different times of our lives.