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But it's good, as an artist and as a human, to write from a bunch of different places. With this record, there are two things I really want to challenge myself on. One is to be authentic, and not pretend that things are great when they're not, and not only write about the bright side. But the other side of that, I think there's a bias in popular music and in our culture that "cynical is deep," or that only shallow people are happy, and that if you're really a thoughtful person, you're going to be gloomy.

You will dare to be happy, right?

Arends That's right, which is of course why I'm Pollyanna. But I want to avoid both extremes and just try to be honest.

Any other songs written from your own difficult experience?

Arends "Land of the Living" was born in a recent time when it felt like winter in my life, one of those protracted seasons of feeling dead and cold and dark. A couple of women in our Bible study group have clinical depression. We've watched them go through times when their world gets really dark and cold and small, and it is so hard for them to feel God's presence.

One of them said she clings to Psalm 27:13—knowing that the psalmist, the man after God's own heart, admits there was a time when he couldn't see God's hand. That admission is healing to my friend, knowing she's not the only one. And then comes the promise that you'll see his hand again, right here in the land of the living.

Then when I found myself in my own little winter of discontent, I started trying to hold onto that verse for my own life, and that song came out.

You cover a Mark Heard song on this album, and your liner notes say you like his music because it's "honest and abrasive and prophetic and brilliant." Not many artists aim for "abrasive" and "prophetic." Mark Heard probably did, and so did your old friend Rich Mullins. What about you? Do you say, "I'm going to intentionally tick people off with this song"?

Arends (Laughing) I wish that could be said of me, but it's not so! I'm drawn to artists that have what I call "that prophetic edge," where they're just going to speak the truth, and if it hacks some people off, so be it—and they probably kind of enjoy it if it does. Mark Heard was like that; Rich Mullins was absolutely like that. And Steve Bell is a little bit like that. I like their courage—that sort of "truth is more important than being a people pleaser" edge. I don't think I have it, though. I worry about being misunderstood. I worry about hurting somebody's feelings.

When I first started out, I had stage fright. A performance consultant told me, "Artists think people come to a concert to see a great show, but people aren't coming to be impressed. They're coming to feel loved and to make a connection." And then he said, "The enemy of love is self-consciousness." Which for me, as a shy person, was this huge revelation. Until then, my aspiration was to be a songwriter for other people. But that was a turning point for me in terms of singing my own songs. And my job, from the first concert I did from that point on, has been to love my audience.

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