Project Person // Profile #15

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Our group text absolutely exploded as Nicole’s husband Tyler sent us updates from the Grammy’s. “Nicole’s category is up next,” he said, and I turned on the live-stream in the grocery store parking lot. 

Some context: Nicole and Tyler are our pastors and two of our dearest friends. We live in the same town, and Nicole and I worked together for a season, where she used her gift with words to write for a marriage counseling app where I did the marketing.

We have walked through so many of life’s ups and downs together over the years, but watching Nicole at the Grammy’s was a particularly high high—even more so because of the story behind it. 

During Nicole’s first pregnancy, she experienced hyperemesis gravidarum—an illness made famous by Princess Kate. Nicole could hardly keep food down and was hospitalized multiple times throughout, but the illness subsided nearly immediately when she gave birth to her baby girl, Evie. 

They eventually wanted to try for another baby, but Nicole was terrified of being so sick again—and of parenting a toddler while enduring HG. They ended up experiencing a period of infertility and subsequent infertility treatments, and coupled with hard relational dynamics in that season of life, she began to experience panic attacks. Small things quickly became inflated, and her world began to feel entirely out of control. 

They got pregnant but then experienced a devastating miscarriage, and the grief compounded. 

Would they continue with infertility treatments? Could she handle another pregnancy? 

Looking to make sense of it all, Nicole returned to a practice she had done many times before: journaling stream-of-consciousness thoughts. 

Sometimes she wrote prayers to God and other times she wrote what she was hearing in return. She wouldn’t stop to edit or read but would instead just write what came to her, sometimes returning to the words days or weeks later. 

In October of 2019, she wrote: Fear is not your future, sickness is not your story. Joy, joy, and more joy is coming.

“When you are going through fertility treatments,” she said, “you are constantly undergoing tests or visiting specialists; infertility becomes your identity.” These words—sickness is not your story—were counter to how she felt, but they became a mantra of truth. 

A few months later, in a meeting at church, someone said they felt like God wanted to comfort those experiencing sickness and fear. The words Nicole had journaled came back to her then, and she sang them during a time of worship. Later, her worship pastor JJ told her she needed to do something with those phrases, that there was “something there.” 

JJ was the co-founder of Maverick City Music, a worship music collective established to create a space for diverse voices in the Christian music scene. JJ began to workshop with Nicole and their friend and co-worker Hannah, on the piano. They added heartbreak is not my home and death is not the end, and sang the phrases for months in church, tagging them on to random songs. They wrote a few choruses they didn’t love and would text back and forth with ideas, but Nicole ultimately thought they would just remain her own special words, sung here and there when they needed to remind themselves of their truths. 

This was all during COVID, though, and the words became special to others, too. I remember hearing them sung at church and latching on to them immediately, as one of my best friends was walking through her daughter’s cancer at the time and we were about to enter my husband’s deployment. “Fear is not my future” was etched into my brain as five words worth repeating. 

In December of 2021, JJ sent Nicole a 6am text. “Hey, I texted this song to Brandon Lake and he loved it. He added some lines. What about this?”

He sent her a voice memo of him singing it as his piano. “Hello peace. Hello love. It’s a new horizon…” 

This was the heart of Nicole’s journal entry! Joy is coming. 

Brandon Lake was an emerging Christian recording artist that seemed to be growing quickly in popularity and influence. With Nicole and Hannah’s permission, he and JJ continued workshopping the song until they had something they tried out on tour. Then a month later, they performed the song at the Passion Conference, and Nicole received a video of 60,000 people singing her words. 

In May of 2022, Brandon Lake released a solo record called Help. He, too, had experienced panic attacks the year prior and felt like God wanted him to write songs about mental health. He wanted to include Fear is Not My Future on the record. 

The track was also recorded on Maverick City Music’s record with Kirk Franklin, and Nicole and Hannah were listed as songwriters on all versions. Nicole had to work out the royalty splits and even start her own publishing company as an artist with Sony and BMI!

The song was on the radio and out in the world, and it became somewhat of an anthem in a season of high anxiety. I remember my neighbor telling me she chose that song as the theme of a retreat she was planning, having no idea of the local connection.

That summer, Maverick City Music did a recording in the church in Charleston where the shooting took place. Nicole saw that song being used for a fresh hope and unity and felt amazed to have God use these words for something so much bigger than just her own encouragement. 

But still, the encouragement for Nicole was personal—and full circle: Just days before the song was released on Brandon’s record, Nicole found out she was pregnant again. Joy and gratitude mixed with the uncertainty and grief of another round of hyperemesis and the fear of another loss. The song’s lyrics were as meaningful as ever. 

One day, JJ sent a group text to those that made the song happen: “We’re going to the Grammy’s!” 

The song had been nominated for Best Contemporary Christian Music Performance/Song at the 65th Annual Grammy Awards in 2023—which was set to take place just three weeks after Nicole’s due date. 

Nicole said that if she were in any other stage of life, this would have been the event of her whole year. Yet, as sick as she was, she could hardly even think about it. 

She couldn’t try on dresses because of her quickly changing body, and they booked fully refundable tickets because of the uncertainties with the delivery. She had an unexpected C-Section (and a healthy baby girl!), and, even days before the awards show, was undecided about attending.

Ultimately, her husband Tyler (and all of us friends, I’ve gotta say), convinced her that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and with a weeks-old newborn, they flew to Los Angeles. 

I’ll never get over this photo she sent us from the hotel. 

For a song written from a place of brokenness, she was here with joy, joy, and more joy. 

As Nicole walked the red carpet (“Nicole! Nicole! Let me see your smile!” she was surprised to hear), Tyler sat in the hotel lobby with their baby girl, texting her (and all of us back home) throughout. 

Sitting in the auditorium later, Nicole couldn’t get over sharing the room with so many people so good at their craft. She said the energy was electric, that everyone was just overjoyed for one another. 

As they called their category, we all tensed. Nicole remembers thinking, “There’s just no way.” But then, they announced the winner: Fear is Not My Future. 

Hannah and Nicole stood, and everyone around them celebrated. Hannah’s shoe strap had broken and Nicole’s dress was too long, and they remember hobbling down the aisle through incredibly bright lights, past Viola Davis (funny the one thing you’ll remember in a moment like that), and joining Brandon Lake, JJ, and the others on stage. In his speech, Brandon honors Nicole and Hannah directly:

I wept buckets, yelling solo in my car. 

They walked backstage, where the CEO of the recording academy shook their hands. They all took photos with a “placeholder grammy,” and Brandon said, “You need to hold this. This is yours.” 

She saw Trevor Noah, Harry Styles, Taylor Swift. And then she walked into the bathroom to pump, alongside a few other moms in their gowns. 🫠

Nicole’s actual Grammy arrived with her name on it a few months later in a recording academy box, alongside a Tiffany’s medal. Naturally, we all got dressed up and passed it around. It now lives on her piano in her home. 

It is truly incomprehensible to see how far this song has gone. She’s read crazy stories like, “I was about to commit suicide, but then this song came onto the radio.” Or, “I was in a gang, and my heart was so hard. But then I heard this song and wept.”

For years, people had spoken over Nicole that she would be a songwriter or that her words would go far. She often felt like she had to make God’s word come true, saying she tried so hard to write songs in the past—but this experience taught her that He’s the one to fulfill His promises, not her. 

“I sometimes feel like an imposter,” she told me, “like this all just happened.” But she’s learned that allowing people—and herself!—to be inspired and blessed by her own craft, however that pours forth, is so much of the point. 

“I am so grateful that my pain has been able to touch the pain of others,” she says. 

And this song has come back to her as well, touching her own pain in a new way: Since the birth of her rainbow Grammy baby Natalie, Nicole and Tyler have suffered the loss of two more precious girls. 

In the midst of this grief, people have sent her her own lyrics, each line denouncing something that so easily defines us. But then they also claim something bigger, something outside our own circumstances. In singing to the God she’s found to be the creator and redeemer of lives and dreams, Nicole writes: 

Fear is not my future, You are.  

Sickness is not my story, You are.  

Heartbreak is not my home, You are.  

Death is not the end, You are.  

And then there are the lines Brandon Lake added. As a reminder to Nicole as much as to the millions of others that have been encouraged by this song, there’s this:

Let Him turn it in your favor.

Watch Him work it for your good.

He's not done with what He started.

He's not done until it's good.

These Grammy-award-winning lyrics could have been lost if Nicole had edited herself in that journal, but she is now convinced that the most impactful things she’s ever written are those that come from the gut, when emotion bursts forth. 

“God is a creator,” Nicole says. “And what He made, He called good.” 

This is true of words—some hidden in journals and some shared with millions—and of lives—some lived long and some called heavenward before they take an earthly breath.

And this is true of my dear friend Nicole, who has experienced the throes of fear, sickness, heartbreak and death—but who has faced each with honesty, grace, and defiance, with hope on the horizon.

-Callie

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William Warren, the author of The Conquering Creative and the founder of The Sketch Effect, a company that offers the coolest graphic recordings of live events (see what I mean here).

Next time, I’m sharing an interesting author hack I learned in this publishing process along with a special little round-up I’m putting together for you. Stay tuned!