There's Joy (Even When You're Stressed Out!)

Kyle Wesley is one of the three members of the new supergroup City of Enoch. They've joined the TOFW tour this year and we are so excited to share their music and strong faith with you! Kyle first shared this story from the stage at TOFW.

Like the other two members of City of Enoch, my wife, Katelyn and I welcomed a new baby into our home during the process of writing and recording our new album, “Sweet Redeemer”.

There are some things that have surprised me about parenthood and other things that haven’t. I wasn’t surprised at how much I loved my daughter from the moment she was born, but I was unprepared for the sleep deprivation. I mean, everyone told me that my wife and I would never sleep again when the baby finally came, and I thought, “Yeah… It can’t be thaaat bad!” Oh, it’s thaaat bad! But, I’m happy to report that it’s gotten a lot better since the beginning… for me. I bet many of you would identify with my poor wife. I sleep like a rock, and I think she would like to hit me with a rock.

One of the most surprising and hardest things for me to adjust to as I’ve started my new family has been the high level of stress that has come into my life.

About a month before my daughter Brooklyn was born, I was dealing with a lot. In addition to my work as a musician, I’m a business owner and my role in that business is administrative. It can be fairly demanding of my time and patience. The closer we got to Katelyn’s due date, the more pressure I felt to provide, and the more unstable work seemed to get. A lot of things seemed to be going wrong, and on top of that, we had to get quite a few songs written for this album. I started to feel really buried, discouraged and maybe even depressed. Every time something went differently than I had planned, it seemed like a huge deal and my first reaction was always a negative one until it got to the point where negative was all I could really see.

During the process of putting this album together, we felt inspired to reach out to some other local songwriters to see if there were any other songs that might be a good fit for the album. We received a submission for a song titled “There’s Joy”, written by Emily Bea. Here are some of the lyrics:

I’ve been walking down long roads
I’ve been places where I felt so alone
I’ve been searching for something
For anything that brings me to you

Back to your arms, to feel your embrace
Back to my knees I fall into your grace

When you find me caught in the rain
When fear and doubt try to change my way
When you find these tears in my eyes
When I’m blinded by all the world’s lies,
You show me what I struggle to see
The joy in my journey.

As I sat in the back of my studio space with my headphones on listening to this song, the waterworks started. I could feel the Spirit so strongly testifying to me that in spite of my circumstances, there was joy to be had in my journey if I would only change the way I was viewing my situation. I was overwhelmed with gratitude for the countless blessings that my Heavenly Father had blessed me with, most of all for an incredible woman who has always supported me and who was only weeks away from bringing into the world one of the greatest blessings we will ever know.

These two are the joy in my journey.

We put the song on the album and I still feel blessed by its message every time I get to sing it.

I still have really hard days. I still have challenges and trials. We all have different circumstances and different journeys to take, but I testify that regardless of who we are or what our circumstances may be, with the Lord’s help, we can and will find the joy in our journey. Truly, Adam fell that we might be, and we are that we might have joy.

Don't miss City of Enoch on the ARISE tour this year. See if they are coming to your city here!