(psst... to download the song "Alive" from Superchick, go to Superchick Loves Interlinc)

So much of the last 3 years has been for me centered around one lesson. I\'m not sure I realized I was learning anything at times, but somewhere along the way it started to make some sense in my heart and in my head. It was simply \'Life is a journey, not a destination.\' Sounds pretty simple, doesn\'t it? Well it seems basic, but I\'m not sure I\'ve met many people whose lives reflect this perspective. And I feel like this place I\'ve come through and come to in learning it hasn\'t been easy, but it\'s been this beautiful, painful amazing journey. Exactly what I expect the rest of life to be. Life is a journey. Life is not us handing God our list of what we want for Christmas, and starting the New Year thinking, "Wow, I got everything I wanted, exactly when I wanted it!" Life isn\'t about what I want or what I think is best for myself or the people in my life. It\'s a journey... one we will mess up time and time again. One we will find ourselves lost in. It will disappoint us, hurt us, break our hearts, leave us feeling broken, lonely and not knowing where to even start to reach out, to cry out to God and ask for His help.Our last album, Beauty from Pain, was the start of about 2 years of struggle, of brokenness, of being humbled and feeling smaller than I could imagine a girl could feel. So small. So crushed by the blows life dealt me. One thing after another: cancer in our families, relationships ending, divorce tearing through our families, friends struggling, money issues, depression and questions of \'where is God in all of this?\' So much of that album was about that place I found myself. The interesting thing is that I found myself 2 years later right back where I thought I\'d never be again. Tthis time we were still steadily touring Beauty from Pain, and I find myself singing these songs, hoping to reach out and encourage people in their pain and struggle - but at the same time, our songs were reaching out to ME. I felt the process of healing start happening, in such a different way this time. It was so evident that God had given me a strength, wisdom I didn\'t know was rooted in me, and this time around, my approach, my attitude, my reaction to my situation were so different. It was immediately thinking, "what can i learn through this? Why could this be happening again? God wouldn\'t allow this pain if there wasn\'t a purpose..." You know, some days I really felt convinced that I was there again so that my honesty, my vulnerability would be evident every night while I was singing those songs about pain, about God\'s grace. I think you can write a beautiful song, but without the emotion, without the true feeling in your words, in every note, people can sense that it\'s not real. It was very real to me. Maybe more than it had ever been.So when we started writing this new album, where did I find myself? In a very healthy relationship, with my best friend, with a Godly man who respects me, who fills my heart to the brim and has every day since I\'ve known him. But before I met him, you know what made me ready for this relationship? I finally realized that if life totally disappoints me, if it\'s nothing like what I want or dream it will be, if I don\'t get married and find the "American dream," God is enough. God is enough of a reason to go on. To take another breath. To make it through another day of beauty, of struggle, of a breaking heart, of money trouble, broken families... His grace is enough to not just get through, but to life a life to the full! And I believe that\'s why there has to be pain, mess-ups, nos instead of always a yes. It\'s so we see that we are here for so much more than just us and that being happy all the time and obtaining cool things, making great friends and have 2.5 kids and a dog and a 3 car garage doesn\'t matter - it all fades away. Life isn\'t a place to get to. Struggles have to keep coming and reminding us how much of nothing we really are without God and His bigger picture. Life isn\'t the next birthday, the next tax bracket, a bigger house, more DVDS or electronic gadgets... it\'s today. In fact, it\'s right now. I found that looking back in journals of life and growing up, I was always talking about why I\'d be happier tomorrow. I\'m not happy now, but IF this thing happens, THEN I will be. But then I\'d get to the thing, to the destination I was traveling to, and I was so disappointed with what I found. Why? Because life was what happened along the way. It was the people I met in between the times I was wishing away. It was the times I could have stopped and enjoyed the view, smelled some flowers (maybe literally)... but I was in a rush to get somewhere, and once I was there, I realized how much I was missing out on, hoping for tomorrow, and missing out on today. Today is what we have. It\'s all we have. Love the day you\'re given, love the people in it, share life, the joys and the tears, and when you get to this magical destination you\'re hoping to reach, maybe you\'ll have no disappointments, no regrets - you\'ll have these amazing memories you captured along the way.For me, Rock What You Got came at a time when I came to be resting. I am resting in a peace that I\'ve found not through things or finding love, but in knowing that without these things and people, I still have this peace. I know that storms come and shake up happy times - they surprise us, they shake us to the core - but if there is a solid faith rooted in us, we can be shaken but not fall. And we can rest in the faith that the God we serve will crawl through life with us when we get to those days where it takes all the strength we have left to crawl through it. He doesn\'t ask us to clean ourselves up, to fix it all and then come back to Him when we have life figured out. He takes us as we are. Broken, sad, hopeless, rejected, dumped, fired, depressed... crawling through the day that we have in front of us, knowing that not above us or in front of us, but right next to us our God will crawl with us. He will meet us as we are, where we are, take us back, pick us up when we finally fall... and cover our sins and regrets with His grace that makes no sense until we\'ve needed it, accepted it and felt it.This album is a reflection of where we are and who we all are now. We\'ve been through the storms of life - and there will be more - but we are full of joy. We are full of life. We are ready to live today like there\'s nothing else to hope for. There is a maturity that has come from our struggles, from our pain, and there is a contentment that comes from the realization that life is a journey. It\'s a process we are all in. A trip we are all taking. There\'s no destination; it\'s a long road trip full of bumps and wrong turns and beautiful scenery. The purpose is not to get to the end, but to make the most of now. Of right where you are and who you are right now. Of who we all know we can become, reflecting the God we love more every day that we seek His face. I have never felt this kind of peace before. It is not in anything or anyone that can be taken away. It is in changing our heart\'s desire from something to someone. Someone who has been waiting for us all along, hoping we would discover this little place and finally find rest in Him alone, and then the rest...well, you know the rest. =) -Tricia BrockLyrics and Music by Superchick Song descriptions by Max HsuROCK WHAT YOU GOT“Rock what you got, light up the lot � no one can rock the way you rock”Once upon a time, there was a duckling that looked a little different than everyone else. The other ducklings made fun of it a lot. At puberty, that duckling got teased about its high forehead. When that duckling grew up, it turned out it wasn’t a duck at all. It was Tyra Banks.We’ve all heard that story. It’s easier to believe we’re ugly than to believe that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. You have to fight the lie; no one hands it to you. You have to shake off the insecurities and the beliefs that hold you down. When I see people being who they were created to be, they light up the world around them. You can be that person. I can be that person. If there was hope for this ugly duckling, there’s hope for everyone. Be who you were meant to be.ALIVE“We were meant to live while we’re still alive”I studied computer science in high school. I had an uncle at IBM who helped to develop the microdrive. I spent 4 years studying computer science, and when I graduated I got recruited at a big network solutions company. I was there for 5 years until the tech collapse left us all without jobs. Now I’m doing IT maintenance at a big box chain. Every day I get to work, fix the same problems and play solitaire until 5:30 when my boss isn’t looking. Superchick never existed. We didn’t sell 700,000 records. I never met all the amazing people that are my friends today. I didn’t see 20,000 of them jumping up and down at our show in New Zealand. I never wrote and produced records. I never photographed covers for magazines and albums. I never shot music videos. I never tried surfing, bought my motorcycle or jumped out of a plane. I never met my wife.Well, that’s what would have happened if I’d done the “sensible” thing. But everyone is born with a destiny. God gives us talents that he means us to use. We are meant to live, while we’re still alive.(no disrespect intended to my fellow geeks in the computer industry � I’ll probably be asking you for a job when this ride ends!)HEY HEY“But I won’t bow down, even if the whole world thinks I’m crazy.”About 2600 years ago, a Babylonian king called Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem. The king made a huge golden statue and decreed that all the people should bow down before it, or be thrown into a blazing furnace. Three young men refused to bow down, saying that it was against their beliefs. True to the king’s word, they were thrown into the fiery furnace - but they did not burn. Seeing this with his own eyes, King Nebuchadnezzar called them out and declared that no one should speak against the God of those three men.Actual rebellion takes a lot more courage than appearing to be rebellious.HOLD“Help me see that I am not alone in this”The difficult thing about grief is that we pass through it alone. Just as with physical pain, though my friends may empathize with me, I have to pass the kidney stone by myself. I can find comfort in their presence, but at some point they have to go home and tend to their own lives. God, however, feels my pain, never goes home, and never lets go of my hand � even if I don’t reach out to him.BREATHE“And if reasons we can’t find, we’ll make up some to get by”The mother of my friend was diagnosed with terminal cancer. I asked my friend how she was dealing with it, and she cheerfully said “denial.” When my own father had prostate cancer years later, I came to understand the way your brain locks down on the only outcome you can accept. Fortunately, my father came through the surgery well and is cancer-free now. We’ve seen a lot of hospitals in the last couple years as different family members have fought with cancer, but this song is for anyone struggling to find hope in the darkness � anyone so lost that they have to make up reasons to live.SO BEAUTIFUL“When every girl can see her beauty we will be an army” When I listen to our finished records, I don’t hear what other people hear. I don’t hear the song or the things we got right - I hear the things I didn’t get right. I hear the off notes, weak arrangements, clumsy lyrics and parts that I wish were better. Sometimes it’s so bad it makes me cringe. I feel like I went to the Olympics and I got silver. Silver’s not bad, but when you have gold standards it’s still a failure. I listen to other people’s records, and they sound so much better to me than anything I’ve ever done. I think it’s human tendency to focus on what we wish we could fix rather than what we got right. So many people look in the mirror and discount themselves. We see only the flaws. We have one ideal of success and beauty, and we criticize ourselves relentlessly if we don’t conform to that. We warp and twist ourselves to hide the ugly creature we think we are. We believe that love must be earned because we ourselves are not worthy of love. This robs us of who we are and who we can be. We are fearfully and wonderfully made, and God means for us to shine light and joy into the world - not to creep fearfully and timidly from place to place. Superchick was born out of that message, and it’s a message we will keep repeating because the enemy does not sleep, and his insecurities still gnaw at our hearts. We will shout defiance from the rooftops over and over until all have heard that God has indeed made us all so beautiful.CROSS THE LINE“Everybody dies, but not everyone lives”In “Iron Man,” Yinsen saves fellow prisoner Tony Stark’s life twice. The first time Tony is brought in, wounded Yinsen operates on him to save him. The second time, Yinsen fights the guards, knowing it will cost him his life to buy Tony enough time to complete the iron man suit. As Yinsen lies dying, Tony says to him, “Thank you for saving my life,” and Yinsen replies, “Don’t waste it.”Moby wrote a letter to some of us who had worked on a Christian dance album and rightfully took us to task for being derivative and boring. He writes, “I want us to live and create boldly. If Christ had not lived boldly, he would be known for his ability with a hammer, not his willingness to be hammered to a cross.”If we truly believe that someone died on a cross to save us, do the lives we live reflect that gift?ONE MORE“I’ve got 100 steps to go � tonight I’ll make it 99”If you want to do something, do it. Then do one more past where you’re comfortable. Repeat daily. In the process, you will have not only learned or achieved what you set out to do, but you will have also learned to be a fighter. Any positive change you seek to make in your life, whether it’s losing weight or becoming an Olympian, will be an uphill battle that you will fight every day with yourself. Our natural tendency is to lie down, to give up and admit defeat to ourselves before we even take the first step... but it is learning to always take that next step that will get us to our dreams. If your dream is 100 steps away, how many did you take today?CRAWL“When everything I was is lost, I have forgot but You have not... You have not lost me.”One critic wrote the following about our album, Beauty from Pain:“The songwriting seems more vapid, despite the personalized approach, with most songs merely offering a message of ‘we all hurt, but hold on because it’ll get better.’”I think this critic missed the second half of the message: “Hold on, it will get better. You are not alone, God is with you.” This is not vapid; there is a place below bottom where that is the only message that makes any sense. A friend called me to let me know about his baby birth, but as he asked me to pray, he choked up, unable to get the words out to tell me that his son was born with Down syndrome. I’ve watched mute and helpless while friends have lost family members to cancer. I’ve personally been to the dark place where suicide seems like the only way out. In those times, when our hearts have broken and are overflowing with grief, we don’t need clever theology or smart slogans. All we need is the fundamental core truth of it all...that God has not left us - and though we may have lost hope and lost ourselves and lost everything, He has not lost us.“How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all day?” Psalm 13:1-2STAND IN THE RAIN“Stand through the pain, you won’t drown... and one day what’s lost can be found.”I never thought this song would do well at radio because it had a very specific message about finding the courage to face things you were running from. Initially, it tested poorly and many stations wouldn’t play it. A couple of brave program directors later and the phone started lighting up. It went on to hold 10 weeks at No. 1. Recently, as I listened to the song again, I realized people were writing themselves into the song, and it took on different meanings to different people. That’s the amazing thing about ministry � you do your best with what you can see and sometimes God takes those humble efforts and uses them for much bigger and better things.