Spotlight
Peder Eide: The Power and the Pain
By Susan Mann and Lisa Ryan
The 700 Club
CBN.com –
Although he is not a household name yet, Peter Eide is
both a musician and a motivational speaker who is talking to about
100,000 kids a year. His message is to live for God no matter
what. It’s a message that was birthed when his mom was tragically
killed many years ago.
Says Peder, "My mom was just an amazing woman, a very prayerful
woman, who was truly devoted to her children and her family."
But one day when Peder’s mother was out driving, she was
broadsided by a semi-truck as she was pulling out into a blind
intersection. She died almost instantly. As you might imagine,
Peder was completed shocked.
"It was like being punched in the gut endlessly, and you
can’t make it stop," he recalls. "I remember when
I first got the news I was at football practice, actually. I just
screamed as loud as I could and didn’t know what to do."
Soon, Peder’s shock turned to anger.
"I don’t get it, God, I don’t understand.
I mean, this is so wrong. At that time, I remember just being
angry and feeling lonely," he says.
Like many facing unexpected tragedy, Peder says his emotions
swung like a pendulum from one extreme to the next.
"I remember at times just screaming and bawling, saying,
'I don’t understand why I feel so lonely, I feel so scared.'
And I’d say, 'Is this my fault?' "
Peder kept pushing away every effort to mend his broken heart.
"Only when it got really, really bad would I cry out to
God," he says. "I’d still walk around wounded
rather than be healed. I’d rather be wounded, because healing,
well, that would take a really long time and that seemed more
painful at the time."
But Peder eventually reached a crossroad where he had to make
a choice: continue in self-pity, or pursue emotional healing.
He took the high road, and it led him to a church in Denver.
"The church that I went to at my sister’s church in
Denver, Colo., I lived there for the summer," he explains.
"They really taught so much about this relationship with
Jesus. That summer God just separated me from all the stuff that
was back at my old home. I really tasted Jesus in a fresh way,
and I really saw God as someone who hadn’t left me and who
wasn’t going to give up on me. That was really neat. I think
there’s a bit of the prodigal son to it. I knew I belonged
somewhere earlier in my life, and I knew I had belonged to God,
but it’s like I had just been goofing around and screwing
up. That summer, just getting to run back to my Father’s
arms, to God’s arms, and Him saying, 'I’ve been here
the whole time and I welcome you back,' that was really neat.
I’d say that the healing really began that summer."
 As
the years passed, Peder began to use his musical gifts to communicate
the pain he once felt and the healing he now knew. Peder married
and started a family. But just when he felt free from the pain
of his mother’s death, tragedy struck again. This time his
father was killed in a house fire.
"I remember thinking, I’m going to be all right.
Just knowing that I had been through this before, I didn’t
expect this again. But I remember thinking, Wow, how fortunate
I am to have had the father I had for the years that I had him.
My dad is with Jesus, and my dad got to see my mom. He gets to
see my mom now. That’s pretty cool," he says.
"God is so faithful, so dominating, so will not let me go,"
Peder continues. "It’s not even that my glass is half
empty or half full; God has shown me that it’s so great
to have a glass."
As for his latest album, What a Ride, Peder has this
to say: "That CD is probably the one that is most like me
because that’s what life’s all about. He [God] never
said it’d be easy."
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