Every now and then, a Contemporary Christian artist will release a song with the clear intention of touching hearts and lives. Because of its delicate subject matter, you know that Christian radio won’t be as open to it as with the artist’s previous tracks, and it will break an otherwise stellar run of hits. But it won’t matter, because it says something that needs to be said.
“Marriage is tough,” Mark Hall says in the online liner notes to Broken Together, Casting Crowns’ latest radio single, and a song that fits the mold of what I was talking about in the previous paragraph. “We bring a lot of fairy tales to the picture when it comes to marriage. We bring them to the altar with us [thinking]: ‘This is going to be perfect. We don’t have to be apart. We can just wake up together every morning and no one is going to have morning breath. We’re not going to have any problems.’ And then the problems hit and you don’t know where to file those into your picture. . . The idea I’m trying to say is: ‘Can you lay down who you thought I was and love the ‘me’ that is? Can we take this from where we are now and realize that I can’t be that person?’ Only God is going to be able to make this work and broken people can be broken together. To me, it’s probably the most important song on the record.”
And it is. Not unlike Chris August’s Restore–which, by the way, is a superior radio single, IMHO–Broken Together is an important track of stellar significance because of its subject matter. Husbands and wives in desperate situations can come to terms with the weighty dilemma in their hands because of how well their situation is mirrored in Broken Together. Casting Crowns has never shied away from sensitive relationship issues–take the equally brilliant Megan Garrett-led single, Just Another Birthday, which broke the string of hits from Come to the Well but impacted thousands of lives across the world–and Broken Together continues to show why Casting Crowns continues to be one of the most relevant and important groups in Contemporary Christian music today.
BROKEN TOGETHER Lyrics
Casting Crowns
What do you think about when you look at me
I know we’re not the fairytale you dreamed we’d be
You wore the veil, you walked the aisle, you took my hand
And we dove into a mystery
How I wish we could go back to simpler times
Before all our scars and all our secrets were in the light
Now on this hallowed ground, we’ve drawn the battle lines
Will we make it through the night
It’s going to take much more than promises this time
Only God can change our minds
Maybe you and I were never meant to be complete
Could we just be broken together
If you can bring your shattered dreams and I’ll bring mine
Could healing still be spoken and save us
The only way we’ll last forever is broken together
How it must have been so lonely by my side
We were building kingdoms and chasing dreams and left love behind
I’m praying God will help our broken hearts align
And we won’t give up the fight
Maybe you and I were never meant to be complete
Could we just be broken together
If you can bring your shattered dreams and I’ll bring mine
Could healing still be spoken and save us
The only way we’ll last forever is broken together