Mike Donehey's "Flourish" Receives Almost a Million Streams A Day After Release

By Blessing Harper Aug 28, 2021 08:37 PM EDT

Songwriter, speaker, podcast and video show host, author (of the bestselling book Finding God's Life for My Will), and founding member of the band Tenth Avenue North Mike Donehey released his brand new album Flourish yesterday. In only the matter of one day, the album has received almost one million streams!

One of the reasons why the album resonates with so many listeners is because it contains songs full of encouragement, radical vulnerability, mourning, honesty, acceptance, acknowledgment, Donehey tackles it all in this collection of eleven songs birthed out of his struggle to learn what it takes to truly flourish in any and every circumstance.

The album was birthed during the pandemic. Donehey, like so many others, found himself struggling. Tenth Avenue North, the band that he founded and led for so many years, was amicably disbanding and planning their farewell tour when everything stopped. With the tour canceled and the band officially over, Donehey felt lost, not only about what his next steps were going to be but was feeling like - in his own words - a dried-out sponge.

As months passed, he realized he needed to mourn these drastic life changes as well as the unknown. The more he began to open up and let himself feel sadness and the sting of the pain, "the more joy came flooding in on the other side," he explains. Songs began pouring out and an album was quickly penned.Writing during the pandemic became the anthem he needed to sing for himself, and, as the title song explains, he directs to Psalm 126 that in Christ he has what he needs to truly flourish.

"If you want more joy, allow sadness," Donehey says. "Grieve to get where you need to go because the more you shrink your sadness, you're numbing the pain of hope. Flourish isn't an album of naivete, it's acknowledging that I was in a desert to appreciate the streams running through it."

FLOURISH tracklisting: