Mark Lee – His Words

Now, the “landmark thing” was a word I found myself using a few times as I was editing the book, and I was straddling this fine line between writing a memoir and writing a Christian living book. I didn’t feel like I had really established the right to preach to people. I totally wanted to be, “Hey, if you and I are being cool and I’m telling you my story, I hope there are some things that you can take away from it.” We’re all wired differently, but we have these certain things in our life that we can look back and go, “This is important.” God made me a certain way and this is why. I love that “landmark” idea.

CCM: You describe one of those landmarks that was unexpected to me. I didn’t realize that you had sort-of quit the band along the way. Thinking back, if you are at that page in your Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book, and you chose to quit the band and stay in school at Georgia Tech, where do you think you might be now, and particularly, how would music still be a part of your life?
ML: Well, I was majoring in history at the time, so I feel like I would probably have ended up getting a degree in history and either gone into teaching or law. I probably would still be living around here and either become a teacher or a lawyer. I probably would still play guitar and maybe play in the worship band at church.

By that point, Third Day was on a path such that something was going to happen, and Mac is so talented anyway with his vocals and songwriting abilities. There still would have been either a Third Day or Mac solo success with something. I think I probably would be totally okay, but I would have had to always think, “Man, I could have done that.”

There’s this fear of “missing out” thing that kids talk about, but I think if I was really honest with myself, I think that was a lot of why I stayed with the band. I thought, “You know what? I want to ride this thing out for a while and see what happens.”

CCM: And you’re still on that ride.
ML: God’s dreams that He has for us are so much bigger than we have for ourselves. At that point in time all I knew was that I wanted to get married and have a job, so I had the pressures of finishing school and achieving all of these goals I set for myself. God saw past all that, and had this bigger dream. He still had it set up and it’s happening in its way.

> READ | Mark’s comments about recording Revival

click to buy