Track 5: Pixels and Grace
From The Jacked Up Life Soundtrack | Based on Chapter 5: “The Jacked Up Family”
There’s something oddly sacred about a family photo.
Smiles locked in a frame, frozen in time. And yet, behind every perfectly captured moment is an invisible story—of words not said, tensions unresolved, love expressed imperfectly, and grace shown in the most ordinary, unremarkable ways.
Pixels and Grace picks up sonically where Pour It New left off. Acoustic guitar, gentle piano, and a raw simplicity let the lyrics breathe. But the voice shifts. Now a warm, vulnerable female vocal carries the weight of this track, giving voice to sons, daughters, parents, or siblings who’ve felt the quiet ache of family not quite working the way they hoped… and choosing to stay anyway.
Whether your story comes from a family of faith, fracturedness, adoption, absence, or awkwardness, you’ll find yourself somewhere in this song. The chorus confesses the truth so many of us need to hear:
“We’re not a perfect picture, but we’re pieces of a plan / Stitched together by pixels and grace…”
That’s the heartbeat of The Jacked Up Life‘s fifth chapter. It’s an honest reckoning with the messiness of family life, while also recognizing that God does some of His most beautiful work not despite our brokenness, but right in the middle of it.
The lyrics don’t shy away from real-life tension:
Debates in the kitchen.
Silence in the car.
The desire to curate a cleaner version of our lives for others.
The quiet hope that love can outlast the wear and tear.
And yet, the bridge is what holds it all together:
“So we open up the curtains, let the daylight in / Carry every burden, loving as we can…”
That’s the heart of Pixels and Grace. It’s not that we’ve got it all figured out, but that we’re still showing up, still loving, still letting the light in.
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As you listen to this track, let it remind you that you’re not alone in your jacked up family. And maybe—just maybe—God isn’t looking for perfect portraits. He’s building mosaics of grace, one pixel at a time.
Next up, a song that covers Chapter 6, The Jacked Up Church…
-Michael