{"id":5124,"date":"2015-09-12T11:00:08","date_gmt":"2015-09-12T16:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/?p=5124"},"modified":"2015-09-09T15:15:01","modified_gmt":"2015-09-09T20:15:01","slug":"how-i-found-country-music-and-learned-that-everything-happens-for-a-reason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/2015\/09\/12\/how-i-found-country-music-and-learned-that-everything-happens-for-a-reason\/","title":{"rendered":"How I Found Country Music and Learned That Everything Happens for a Reason"},"content":{"rendered":"

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Il4qOQGUGbo<\/p>\n

People who lose faith when their prayers don\u2019t come true can be very misguided. When they lose an athletic game, don\u2019t get the girl of their dreams, or don\u2019t get a job they apply for, it\u2019s very easy to turn away from God. Through family, faith, and country music, I have learned to keep a positive outlook when things don\u2019t go the way I plan.<\/p>\n

From a young age, my family ingrained in me the saying \u201ceverything happens for a reason.\u201d I didn\u2019t just learn that lesson from my parents, however. I learned it from the music they played. Some of my first memories were sitting in my car seat listening to Tim McGraw, the Dixie Chicks, and Garth Brooks. I specifically remember asking my dad if every country singer was Garth Brooks because I thought they all sounded the same. As I grew older, I maintained an affinity for country while my friends listened to pop and hip hop. There weren\u2019t many country fans in Arizona and if you had asked my friends who Garth Brooks was, they would\u2019ve had no idea. They would have never heard my all-time-favorite song, \u201cUnanswered Prayers.”<\/p>\n

\"26e0af03a250d3d93a4725b1c581c6be.1000x1000x1\"Although many country songs have taught me valuable life lessons, there hasn\u2019t been one that has impacted me as much as Brooks\u2019 \u201cUnanswered Prayers.\u201d It was always one of my favorite songs but the significance of the lyrics didn\u2019t hit me until I started writing songs myself. I had the same feelings about a girl in high school that Garth did in his song. It helped me get through that. It also helped me overcome obstacles and disappointments like losing a state championship. Although the song is about a girl, I quickly learned it translates to all aspects of life. In the song, Brooks tells a story about how bad he wanted a girl in high school and if he\u2019d have married her, he wouldn\u2019t have met his wife today. In the second verse, Garth sings about how his \u201cold flame\u201d \u201cwasn\u2019t quite the angel\u201d he remembered in his dreams. By the end of the song, the listener is convinced how lucky Garth was that God didn\u2019t answer his prayer to marry his high school crush. He hits home with the hook of the chorus and arguably the greatest line ever written, \u201cSome of God\u2019s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.\u201d<\/p>\n

If it wasn\u2019t for my family, I probably would have never been influenced by songs like \u201cLive Like You Were Dying,\u201d \u201cNever Wanted Nothin\u2019 More,\u201d and \u201cStupid Boy.\u201d If it wasn\u2019t for songs like \u201cUnanswered Prayers,\u201d I would probably think country music is just about beer, the south, and tailgate parties. It\u2019s fair to say I would be a completely different person if I didn\u2019t have my family, faith, and country music.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Il4qOQGUGbo People who lose faith when their prayers don\u2019t come true can be very misguided. When they lose an athletic game, don\u2019t get the girl of their dreams, or don\u2019t get a job they apply for, it\u2019s very easy to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-post-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5124"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5197,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5124\/revisions\/5197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}