Lindsay McCaul on Struggles, New Album, and Say Yes to the Dress
Casting Crowns-approved, new artist Lindsay McCaul is preparing to release her full length debut after a stirring EP that landed her on TLC’s “Say Yes to the Dress.”
Her transparency isn’t limited to her music, seen as she opened up about struggles that turned into songs, such as an eating disorder, and being the first artist to perform on “Say Yes To The Dress.”
If It Leads Me Back is the title of McCaul’s debut full-length project. Although this is McCaul’s full debut, she is no newcomer to the music ministry.
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A worship leader on staff at Harvest Bible Chapel in Illinois, McCaul released her EP last year that captured the hearts of Christian music fans, one of them being Casting Crowns frontman Mark Hall who invited her on tour.
“When you listen to their music, you hope they’re a certain kind of person and I can say, having spent the past couple of months with them, that they are everything you would hope they would be by listening to the message in their music,” McCaul told BREATHEcast.
Like Casting Crowns, McCaul is known for her heartfelt songs that are birthed from various seasons in life including difficult moments of struggle, which birthed the song “Take My Hand” catching the ears of the producers of TLC’s “Say Yes To The Dress.”
“I just got married this past September so I love watching ‘Say Yes to the Dress,’ just for humor and to see what other people do and I think it’s funny. So then, when I heard I was going to get to go on the show, I was excited but then I was also like, well, do they know that I’m a Christian artist?”
“They had never done something like that, bringing an artist on the show to actually sing at a wedding but for some reason they like the song. I was surprised to hear they thought it would be a great fit for a wedding, just because, for me ... it came from more of a place of brokenness, but they liked it and brought me on the show.”
“And the amazing thing was the groom and the bride were both believers and the groom was a youth pastor...”
Writing the song from a place of brokenness, during its creation, festivity was not on her mind.
“The song actually came out of one of my darker seasons where God was just letting me go through a bunch of different things. A relationship had ended and it was a longer relationship, so it was pretty painful. And then, my pastor had found out he had cancer and my father has a terminal disease that he’s battling, he’s still battling. That was a painful season for him.”
“So all these different things were going on and things were changing. One night I was just lying awake in bed and I felt like God reminded me of the story of Peter out on the Sea of Galilee. It was like 3 in the morning or something and I was like ‘God, I am not about to read that story right now,’” she said laughingly.
“I just felt like the Lord was saying you need to read that story. Just read it. So as I read through that passage of Scripture telling that story of Peter out on the water, it reminded me that we all go through these seasons where, you know, we are confident going into the situation, that we think we know what God is going to do and then as we get into the situation, we blink for a second and realize, things are not the way we thought they were going to be.”
The song captures the essence of trusting God in the midst of trouble, not asking to avoid them altogether.
“It’s not that we need Jesus to take away the storm. We need His presence through it.”
Growing up in a Christian home, McCaul was exposed to many stories in the Bible. At the age of 14, preparing for a missions trip, she realized the Man that she was going to tell people about, she didn’t know personally herself. Seeing this, she decided to give her life to Christ. This came in the midst of a battle with an eating disorder.
