Pick Axe from Micronations by Andrew Howie

When she was just 16, she loved Keith Green
And she cried at the news he was dead
She watched Brother Sun and Sister Moon
Then took a pick-axe to her bed
She dismantled all her comforts, surrendered up her soul
Until the blood that filled her veins
Was demon-free, as pure as the snow

Itinerant evangelist
She travelled far and wide
From Bosnia to Birmingham
With the Spirit as her guide
Until she landed in the sleepy, south-side town of Waterfoot
Where she strode across my path
In her knee-high leather boots

It took 3 long years to allay the fears
I'd been trying not to face
My laziness and cowardice
Were tempered by her grace
Until I set that phone to ring at 5am, not a moment too soon
And I whisked her off, blindfolded
To that wooden bench in Troon

Then we hit the road to No Man's Land
Where we hunkered down inside
Our family of two increased
Exponentially to five
Our disappointments, disillusions at the certainties we'd felt
Made us take our life into our hands
And retreat to the Central Belt

If it were up to the worst part of me
This house would be a keep
Locking out the undesirables
The losers and the freaks
But her extrovert compassion rips the hinges off the walls
And I remember
Who's the biggest freak of all

She sometimes thinks the girl
Who chopped her bed up is long gone
That the radical nature of her belief
Has been watered down
But her progress isn't measured by her prayers, books or songs
But by the space she makes inside her heart
For love and lives gone wrong

• Alternative
• Scotland
• singer-songwriter
• United Kingdom