In the days of social media where our messages are constricted to a specific number of characters, our cover story goes against all of these modern-day rules of engagement. We invite you to stop your schedule and allow for this read to be the interruption for the next hour. Cancel all alarms, wait for the baby to be asleep, and if for whatever reason you simply can’t find the uninterrupted time to dwell in this conversation, there’s no reason why you cannot go to bed just a little later or perhaps be up prior to sunrise. For those who know of the very-talented Christy Nockels, you will indeed fall at your feet with her words and for those who are meeting her for the first time, grab a hold of your current position in life and allow her sweet tender voice to speak volume to your heart, and mind. With no further ado, I present to you Christy Nockels.
Singer, songwriter, soon-to-be author, educator, daughter, wife, mother, sister, and friend—which title or role is the toughest and requires more [which goes] outside of your natural being; how and why? Well, the “soon-to-be author” part remains to be seen. I’ve been writing, just sort of under the table, but it has felt like climbing Mount Everest. It’s something that I’ve had to put down for months at a time and I’ve had to just be okay with that. I’m not sure a book deadline is what I really need right now [she smiles].
This answer might seem like I’m dodging the question but I don’t know that any one of these titles or roles requires more of me or is more daunting than the other. I think it’s truly the balance of it all that can daily go outside of my natural being. Just when I think I have one figured out, something drops and drops big time. I recall a moment at my farm table in the early 2000s where I sat 100 percent burned out, staring at my kitchen sink full of sippy cups and dirty dishes. My heart sank as I breathed out the words, I can’t. I felt like the biggest failure, yet those two words are actually what the gospel is really all about. Left to our own devices, for salvation and for daily living, we all fall short. Just as we are powerless to save ourselves and to earn our way to God, we are powerless to live a life of balance and purpose without Jesus. This is why you will see the words in Christ over and over throughout the gospels. “For in Him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28) Many Christians don’t even fully understand what it means to live in Christ and end up on what feels like a never ending merry-go-round of striving and trying to make life work. I know because I was one of those people for lots of years. I’m forever grateful that Jesus so kindly showed me that admitting that I can’t do it all is the beginning of Him being able to come live His beautiful life through me. So what I can’t do in the natural, He comes and does through me super-naturally. Yes, I have to plan, be strategic and organized to keep things rolling but I’m not exhausted anymore because I’ve got this deep soul-rest that He’s got it all.
Part two of the farm table epiphany was to indeed re-prioritize my life and put the health of my heart and my family first. You know what was crazy? Once I did that and let go of all I was trying to manage to keep it all spinning, I actually walked straight into some of the most fruitful years of my career. The more I keep the main things the main things the more I have seen God do God-size things with my life
How did your childhood and upbringing help bloom you into the woman you are today? There’s not a week that goes by that I don’t think about something from my childhood or how I was raised that helped shape me into who I am and prepare me for what I do. My dad was a pastor my whole life…big churches, small towns. This is where I first took the stage and learned how to tell a story with a song. It is also where Jesus began to lay a foundation in me for all of life. One of the most obvious ways that He did this was through my parents. My mother is a pianist and is the one who sat for hours with me, playing as I’d sing through entire songbooks by Amy Grant and Sandi Patty. Yet, somehow God gave my parents the wisdom to keep developing my heart and not just my voice. It has made a lasting difference to this day. They could have shopped a record deal for me at 16 but instead I was singing alongside my dad while he preached at youth camps and church gatherings. They could have exploited my voice but they protected my heart…for years. They knew a day would come, at just the right moment, God would move me into what He desired for me. They were right. After 20 years of getting to do what I do, I thank the Lord all the time for where I came from. I’m grateful, honestly, that my career has looked more like a slow but steady climb rather than a sky-rocketing success that fizzled out after only a few years. I owe this to Jesus for how he very purposely shaped such a humble yet brilliant starting place for me. It makes me trust Him all the more for the ending and everything in between.
You married at a young age, still married, and work with your husband—how do you balance work with life and what words can you bring to other marriages who perhaps are struggling with challenges? Perhaps there’s a wife who currently feels inadequate because she’s a stay-at-home wife or perhaps she feels ugly because she’s lost her young figure… how would you address her sorrow? Life is a series of seasons and it’s so important to fully embrace the one you are in and give yourself grace, lots and lots of grace. Our almost 20 years of marriage have held beautiful mountaintop moments and some deep valleys of sorrow. A few valleys back to back when we had multiple miscarriages in 1999. It was hard enough just learning how to communicate with each other and work together to then find ourselves trying to learn how to grieve together. We’ve been through some rough years, that’s for sure. I spent many days in our earlier years playing mind games with my husband; expecting him to magically know what I was thinking and looking to him to bring peace and stability in my life.
I have experienced my share of the ups and downs of learning to accept my body in every season, yet also take care of my myself (heart, mind, body, and spirit) all at the same time. I will say, a huge shift in our marriage happened when I stopped believing lies about myself and began to believe the truth about who I really was. I remember staring in the mirror at myself after my 2nd daughter was born (all of my deliveries were C-sections) and as I was getting ready to let out a sigh of disgust when the Lord spoke gently to my heart. I listened. In His still, small voice He said, “You being so hard on yourself actually offends me.” Then the words of Psalm 139 started flooding my heart: “For you formed my inwards parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in the secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand!”
I stood there with tears in my eyes as God gave me the firm assurance that believing I’m wonderfully made is an act of holiness. As I started to believe it, it started to transform me on the inside. I love the lyric in the classic Christmas Hymn “O Holy Night” that says, “long lay the world, in sin and error pining, ‘till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.” I feel like that is what happened to me that day, my soul felt it’s worth. I felt the sanctity of my life all of the sudden and the very holiness of how I was put together and it changed me. It also changed my marriage as I began to love myself for who God made me to be. See, I believe you have to allow yourself to be loved before you can be love to the people around you. What also begins to happen when you believe it for yourself, you begin to believe it for others and point it out in them. This naturally and contagiously changes the dynamic of your relationship with everyone around you. You no longer look at those people as a source for you to get your needs met, you see them for the gift that they are to your life. I call it “letting God meet the God-needs.” When you do that, people automatically take their rightful place in your world and you see how precious they truly are. When you live from His acceptance and love over you, you are able to start pouring it out on other people rather than sucking the life out of them! I know that this sounds crazy but I can’t remember a “knock-down drag out fight” with my husband since that day. Yes, we disagree on things and have had spats and cranky days but when I started letting God meet every need in my heart, it freed my husband to be my life partner, my friend, and the joy that he is to me.
Photo by Lee Steffen
For more of the interview with Christy Nockels, order your copy of the April/May issue here.
Mavian Arocha-Rowe
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