When I was covering the forced expulsion of 9,000 Jews from their beautiful, established homes in Gush Katif, the “Harvest Belt” of Gaza, in the summer of August 2005, it amazed me how supporters of the “Disengagement” plan were so glib about the destruction of these homes, despite what they viewed as humanistic reasons for supporting it. Couldn’t people realize a happy home is the lifeblood of a person, the roots of someone’s character?
No political argument, no logic, no plea really worked to make the majority of Israelis empathize with the happy homes of the families in Gush Katif—the memories they lost—although the predictions of the Gush Katif “refugees,” as they have come to be called, have been vindicated by the turn of events in Gaza.
But maybe a song will have an impact, almost seven years later.
When a friend forwarded me the video of the Grammy-award winning country song “The House that Built Me” written by Allen Shamblin and Tom Douglas that solidified Miranda Lambert’s career, I cried. The song is about a young woman knocking on the door of the home she had left as a child, occupied by another family since. Since leaving, she’s not the same, and by returning to the “house that built her”, to “touch or feel it,” she hopes to heal the brokenness inside her. Watch it here.
“I prayed the shortest prayer ever: ‘God, would you please help me be a songwriter.’”
The prayer worked. A series of “chance” encounters with music industry professionals brought him to Nashville, but when he got to the capital of country music, he no longer wrote from authentic raw emotion, but from authentic fear that he wouldn’t make it.
“The initial impulse was love—love for music,” he said on stage, in a talk sprinkled with evangelist-like wisdom.
That’s when “The House That Built Me” might have been born, at least subconsciously. A friend told him to go back to Austin, to remember the man who wrote the songs that initially got him noticed. So he took that advice, and upon returning to his Nashville apartment, he penned “He Walked on Water,” his first number one single, cut by Randy Travis.
But again, success soon expelled him from his spiritual “home.”
“Having a hit song is probably the most powerful drug you can experience….you’ll do almost anything to have another hit—to your detriment..”
He was a hotshot in the music world, but a terrible husband and father, living a stressful, unhealthy life.
“Music will ask you lay your children on the altar.”
He took a step back and noticed how the hitmakers around him weren’t necessarily happy.
“I thought if I ever do get inducted into hall of fame, or reach my pinnacle, I don’t want to be standing there without my kids. So I pulled away. People were confused….I honestly thought there was a strong possibility my career was over because I wasn’t playing by the games, the rules.”
So he made building his house—his home—a priority.
“An odd thing started happening, I kept getting cuts—not as a many—but good cuts.” Today, his oldest daughter is a freshman in college; his twins are juniors in high school. “I can look back and say, I didn’t miss my life. Music comes from life….Don’t miss your life.”
“The House that Built Me” is like a tribute to Shamblin’s life, but he’s lucky he could visit his old hometown, and still does, sometimes, as he explains in the video below.