"It started out with an email that my brother sent out over a year ago," LDS artist Nathan Pacheco says. The subject line of the email was: "Currently my favorite Christian rock song."
That's when Pacheco first became exposed to Kari Jobe's song "Forever." The song immediately impacted Pacheco, connecting with him deeply, and he knew one day he would perform it.
But then life came and interfered. "Things got busy with different music projects I was working on at the time and I forgot about the song." However, in one way or another, the song kept coming back into Pacheco's life.
But when Pacheco's premature baby boy was in the hospital, the song took on a deeper level of significance for Pacheco.
At 2 a.m. five weeks before his new son was due, Pacheco's wife, Katie, told him, "I think I'm going into labor." That's when her water broke.
After their new son arrived, the Pachecos were overwhelmed by all of the tests and confused by what was happening. "I've never been a fan of pain and blood, and so as I saw them poking him all over and drawing blood and sticking IVs all over the place, I was having a pretty rough time," Pacheco says, describing the fear and the frustration of that experience.
While their son was in the hospital, Pacheco and his wife would take turns watching him. "Everything was so uncertain and it was something completely foreign to the both of us," Pacheco says.
"I would hold him for hours and for much of the time just listen to music on my headphones. During a day when my heart was particularly heavy, I was listening to the song 'Forever.' And when the song was at its climax, I lost it. I sat there completely bawling as I held him. The meaning of the song reached me to the core—that the Lord really had overcome all things.
'Even though I was bawling, I felt sustained by the most amazing peace— what I believe the scriptures describe as that peace that passes all understanding, meaning that even during times where it makes no sense whatsoever for us to feel peace, we can feel it. That's the peace that only the Lord can give."
After that moment, Pacheco's desire to perform his own version of this song was cemented—he knew this was a message he needed to share.
But, as he began creating and filming this music video, he realized the song had come to mean so much more than his own story.
"This song is about the Lord, but our stories are also weaved into this song because of how His sacrifice touches all our lives in inexplicably personal ways."
Lead image a screenshot from the video above
For more powerful, uplifting music from Nathan Pacheco, check out his new CD, Higher.
Award-winning tenor Nathan Pacheco has toured the world featured alongside world-class artists such as Yanni, Katherine Jenkins, and Placido Domingo. This album is a collection of his favorite songs that connect with those spiritual moments from his performances across the world. Performing with intimate acoustic backing and often featuring piano and cello, Nathan's desire with this album is to help people reach higher, to feel deeper spiritual connection, and to find peace through songs that life the soul.
