The Happy Hour #325: Andrew Peterson

My guest for The Happy Hour #325 is Andrew Peterson. Some of you may know Andrew as simply a musician or artist, which is true. But it is much deeper than that. For more than twenty years now, Andrew has been about the business of quietly changing lives in four-minute increments. When I received Andrew’s bio, there was a sentence in it that truly stopped me in my tracks. So I’m going to quote it directly because I couldn’t have said it better if I tried: “[Andrew] has forged his own path, refusing the artistic compromises that so often come with chasing album sales and radio singles and creating instead a long line of songs that ache with sorrow, joy and integrity, and that are, at the end of the day, part of a real, ongoing, human conversation.” Andrew is also an award-winning author of the Wingfeather Saga, a four-book fantasy adventure series for young people.

Andrew has such a way of articulating real human emotions, and I walked away from our conversation feeling less alone and more understood. In today’s episode, Andrew shares about his experience growing up as a pastor’s kid and nominal Christian, coming face to face with childhood wounds, and dismantling the superiority of “creatives” by redefining its meaning. Andrew also went into detail about what it’s like transitioning from parenting your children to stepping into friendship with them. He worded it perfectly when he said “You transition from being the one who is teaching your kids to being the one who is learning from them.” That was so profound for me. As my kids are getting older and growing into young adults, I find myself learning so much from them. This was a conversation I didn’t know I needed, but I’m so thankful it happened. I hope you walk away from this episode feeling less alone and more understood.

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