“Sometimes it feels like it’s hopeless.
It’s a war just to hang by a thread.
Sometimes, on this side of heaven, oh it just doesn’t make sense.”
Ben Calhoun, the lead singer of Citizen Way didn’t write those ear-catching lyrics – the second verse of their powerful song “Love Has Won” – with any inkling of what this year would hold. But so many will recognize that feeling right now.
“I wrote it because I was at the bottom of the barrel of my life, and it was just all the things I was feeling. Some of the best advice I ever got was from a band called PFR, their lead singer Joel Hanson. He said just write what you know, and that’s what I knew at that point in time. I just try to encourage people with what God has given me in my life – to realize that honesty sometimes is the best policy, and it was.”
“We had just lost our son Jeremiah. We moved to Tennessee, and we started over again in many ways. I lost my job, and we borrowed money from my parents to keep going.”
The inspiration to discover purpose and joy once more came from the unlikeliest of places.
“My wife and I went to a funeral for a friend of ours named Carey. She died of cancer, and left behind her four kids and her husband. My wife and I had been – for about 4 or 5 years at that point – we’d been scared to have more children because she went through such trauma losing our son. But she said that if Carey, who knows Jesus, can go to to be with Him and leave behind her family – if she can not be afraid knowing some day we get new bodies where cancer is destroyed – then I don’t have to be scared either. I know Jesus.”
“And we decided to have another baby, and face our fears. So that’s why we named her Liv, because she did. And that’s when I realized what the song was about. That’s how I finished the chorus. It took me over a year for that song, and that’s when I realized, ‘Hallelujah. Love wins. Love has won. Though the battle rages on, hallelujah. Love has won.”
Ben Calhoun is the lead singer of CCM favorites Citizen Way, with hits like “Should’ve Been Me”, “How Sweet the Sound”, and the latest, “Love Has Won”.
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On the Road with Ben Calhoun from Citizen Way
