We’ve been impressed with Lacey Mosley and the rest of the Flyleaf band since we first met them. We’ve featured her incredible story for Youth Leaders Only members before, and we’ve included Flyleaf music and quotes in ConGRADulations! Grad gifts. Allen Weed recently had a wide-ranging conversation with Lacey. What is included here is just a part of what they talked about. You can read more on interlínc’s website – interlínc-online.com
Allen Weed: Tell us about your youth pastor, Eric Patrick. What role does he have with you now?
Lacey Mosley: I lived in Arlington, Texas when I was in Junior High. I was a pretty loud-mouthed atheist. A friend of ours, Scott, was a Christian and would hang out with us when we were doing drugs, but would never do those things. He was cool, smart, liked the same kind of music we did, dressed like us, and everything. He followed Jesus and didn’t do the same things we did. He was always trying to get me to go to church with him and tried to have conversations to me about Jesus. Then I moved to Mississippi, and was saved there. Before my senior year I came back to Arlington to visit my mom for the summer. Scott showed up at my house and said he heard that I became a Christian. He was kind of making fun of me, because I was always picking on him for being a Christian. He took me to his church where he played bass for his youth group and Eric Patrick was the youth pastor. Eric seemed to always speak right to my situation that I was going through. All the kids in our youth group felt the same way. I think he really listened to the Holy Spirit and was lead by the Holy Spirit when he spoke. It was such a small youth group in a small Baptist Church in a really bad neighborhood. He preached his heart out in front of those seven kids, and little by little the youth group began to grow. That was an amazing experience.
We had been a band for a while and I was trying to keep up with Bible studies, but I’m the only girl in the group. I felt that we needed someone who wasn’t part of the group to keep us accountable. My vision for this band is to go into a dark place and be salt and light. I have seen a lot of bands fall away from doing that and I didn’t want to waste my time. We were being pulled out of church because of our concerts, and I felt a huge burden to make sure we were still getting fed. We needed somebody to lead us.
I wanted to find Eric Patrick. I knew he had left youth ministry, went into business, was married, and had at least one kid. I called information and found one Eric Patrick in the DFW area. Eric’s wife Sarah answered the phone. I told her my name and that I used to be in Eric’s youth group. I thought there would be no way he would do this since he had a wife and kids. I told him I wanted him to be our band pastor, and he said he would need to pray about it. Later on he invited us to his house; we all talked and he took on the responsibility. What he does has been essential for me to be able to keep going. If I didn’t have Eric and Sarah praying for me, I wouldn’t have made it. I would have quit.
I love your vision to go into a dark place, to stay salty, and to be light. The whole Memento Mori idea is exactly that. What does Memento Mori mean, and how did you come up with it as the title of your album?
We saw that a theme had developed with the songs that we had done. We were going through a lot of life-and-death situations, and had to decide what we were going to do in the face of those life-and-death moments. Were we going to run into the arms of God, or run out? What do you do when your life is turned upside down by the death of a loved one? The whole point of Memento Mori is that if we always remember death, then we would make the most of our life. C.S. Lewis said, “Those who make the biggest impact in this life are the ones who think most about the next.” That’s kind of the whole idea – our life is short and precious and so are the lives of the people around us. We have to make the most of every moment we have with them.
Memento Mori is an obscure Latin phrase. I had to go to Wikipedia to look up the meaning.
I was excited that we could find a phrase that was so fitting. My husband studied art, and knew of a painting called Memento Mori that really spoke to him. We both loved it and we all liked it as a band.
In Roman times, the victorious general would come in from battle and the whole community would have a parade to celebrate his return. Walking just behind him in the parade, a servant would say, “Memento Mori. Remember your death. Remember your mortality. Our fates are the same. You may be on top today, but tomorrow our positions could be switched.”
Eric reminds us that we may be counseling someone who is in a deep and dark place, and the next month he or she may be more righteous than we have ever been. People switch positions in all kinds of ways. We are all brothers, we are all humans, and we are in the same boat.
