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The following is an abbreviated version of our conversation in the studio with Jenny Youngman about the release of her first CD.
Steve: With us today in the studio for music and conversation is singer/songwriter Jenny Youngman. We’ll be talking about Jenny’s recently completed CD, Glimpse of Glory. Jenny, thanks for joining us today.
Jenny: It’s good to be here.
Steve: Great. Now I understand you moved here from Chicago, originally from Kansas.
Jenny: We did. Born and raised in Kansas and after college got married and my husband and I both felt a call to go to seminary. So we went to div school just outside of Chicago in Evanston, and spent about 2 or 3 years there. I finished my degree early. So I had to go to work first and got a job in Nashville. We moved to Nashville and have been here ever since—about 8 and a half or 9 years.
Steve: Would you say then that creating the songs for Glimpse of Glory was the first full-scale exercise in songwriting?
Jenny: I would never have called myself a songwriter. You have to write a hundred bad songs…. I’m sure I’ve got notebooks full of really bad songs, but there were a few that I started playing for people and they started saying, “Yeah, that really speaks to me.” And “I think you should play that for some more people.”
Steve: Could you tell us a little bit about the opening track on your record, “Eyes Wide Open”?
 Jenny: Sure. I think that song is like sort of my anthem for the record. It’s probably one of the first songs that I ever wrote and completed and played for other people and got really good feedback about. And it sort of occurred to me that if you want to see the work of God you have to open your eyes and be willing to look for it.
I have a devotional book that I read that just has classic writings in it—a dear bishop in the United Methodist Church wrote a lot of the entries—and one of his prayers ended by saying, “convert me, unmake me, remake me.” And I just thought, yeah, that is what God does to the world. That’s the work of the kingdom—to be unmade and remade over and again. That’s the glory of God.
Steve: So it's not just a personal reverence, but an engaging in some way with the day-to-day, the moment-to-moment.
Jenny: For sure. You know, God is in the friendships. And God’s glory is in the faces of my children and their friends and relationships, and even broken places….
Steve: There’s a song on your record called “God Is inThis Place” that is very comforting. And it seems to be talking to the subject of brokenness, of the need for healing. You mean that as much healing within the body as just healing to any person?
Jenny: I do. I just think that God is about healing and restoration, and that song came as a prayer after the tsunami and Hurricane Katrina. You couldn’t turn on the news without seeing people lining the streets or seeing people completely robbed of their homes and children crying and dying. That song, in particular, has such a special meaning for me because it [felt] like a gift from God. It feels like a way to pray.
 Jenny: Everyone has their way of dealing with tragedy. And, you know, a lot of time my way is just to sit down at the piano and work it out. That’s sort of how that song came to be. It’s been my prayer all along that it would speak to people in even…the day-to-day tragedies of broken relationships and accidents and disease and the general hurts that we feel that we have that we never speak aloud. I’ve always hoped that that song would speak to people in that really deep place in their hearts to say God is there with you.
Steve: A few moments ago you mentioned the importance of friends and relationships. That’s a theme that you also bring into the song, “Love You Like That,” a song about community. How did that one come about?
Jenny: Well, you know, my husband is a pastor, and I’m sort of new at being the pastor’s wife. I wrote that when we were going to a new church. And I was fearful of how people would receive me and also sort of what I wanted to be and who I wanted to become and what my dream for the church would be. There’s also a verse in there that I wrote for someone who just doesn’t like me. It was a painful relationship. And I just sort of said, you know, you can not like me all you want, but you know I’m called to love you. I’m gonna do that because that’s what real community is. And that’s what it means to follow Jesus, to love people [who are] hard to like. So it’s sort of my declaration of community and what that means, especially in the church.
Steve: We’ve been speaking with Jenny Youngman. And you can get her new CD Glimpse of Glory either on iTunes as a download, or you can go to www.jennyyoungman.com. We appreciate having the chance to talk to you and hear your music live in the studio today, Jenny. Thanks so much.
Jenny: Well, thanks for having me.
Related Resources
Jenny Youngman's Website
Complete Transcript (PDF)
Audio Clips
"Eyes Wide Open"
"God Is in This Place"
"Love You Like That"
"We're Going to Be OK"
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