Jaime loves the Pacific Northwest, and you can often find her along the Kirkland waterfront, when she comes to visit. She is just such a thoughtful worship leader. She is a prayer warrior, and she has just got character and integrity for days. She’s got a beautiful story, which is the title of one of her latest songs, about how she is celebrating healing after receiving a debilitating battle with Lyme disease.
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Transcription:
Purposely, your life, God’s purpose. Listen at onpurposely.com.
Jaime Jamgochian: I feel like we’re living in times right now, with everything going on and we need to be reminded, let’s not complicate the gospel. Let’s not complicate our faith. Let’s just come to Jesus just the way we are and let him work out the rest, period.
Sarah Taylor: Her name is Jaime Jamgochian, and she is our featured guest on this week’s episode of the Passion Meets Purpose podcast.
Jaime loves the Pacific Northwest, and you can often find her along the Kirkland waterfront, when she comes to visit. I loved getting a chance to catch up with her. She is just such a thoughtful worship leader. She is a prayer warrior, and she has just got character and integrity for days. She’s got a beautiful story, which is the title of one of her latest songs, about how she is celebrating healing after receiving a debilitating battle with Lyme disease, that diagnosis.
And she’s going to talk about what she went through ways that she’s found healing. She’s also going to share about her first full length album in nearly a decade. So, please welcome my guest, Jaime Jamgochian.
Your new song, Beautiful Story, and your whole record… Let’s talk about it. Tell me about Beautiful Story.
Jaime Jamgochian: Okay, so beautiful story, I call the Anthem of my heart. It literally, oh, the last few years have had so many highs and so many lows. Valleys and mountaintops. Trials and struggles and victories. What I love about God, and I mean, you know, this firsthand is he’s always writing our story, but every chapter doesn’t necessarily look awesome, and glamorous, and beautiful. And there’s some really hard chapters along the way. But what I love of this life of faith is that we have the promises of God to hold onto, you know? And so, we know that he does work all things for our good, we know that what He starts he completes. So, what I love about this new song, beautiful story is I, I literally hope it’s, it’s like a storybook song that takes people on a journey of, you know, wherever you’re at, don’t stop on that chapter. Don’t stop on that page. He’s still writing your story. If it’s not good yet. Hang on.
It’s about to get good cause, you know, in this life of faith with Jesus, we, we have victory in him. So, yeah. So, it’s just more of an Anthem. It’s a worship cry. You write a beautiful story from glory to glory. You know, even though its in between seasons, he’s still writing something good in our lives.
Sarah Taylor: And you have quite a few chapters that give you really the credibility to say all of that because this song was birthed out of a season for you dealing with a chronic illness and praying for healing. Let’s talk about that.
Jaime Jamgochian: Yeah. I hit real rock bottom a few years ago with Lyme’s disease and I had navigated it, I think fairly well for a long time, but it became neurological and man, it just nearly, nearly took me out and it, it brought me to a really low place, which, you know, Never had dealt with such massive anxiety and overwhelming feelings of like, I just cannot function. It was, it was, you know, a headache related brain related. So, it just, it made you feel like you can’t function and, you know, without purpose, without vision, the Bible’s true. We perish. So I just felt like I was so aimless for so long. And I think that the thing that kind of anchored me the most was just holding onto that glimmer of hope, even when I didn’t have it.
Jesus is our hope. So, as long as I was holding onto him, I could mustard up that little mustard seat of faith and say, okay, I’m going to get through another day. But I’m on the other side of it. I, I went to incredible clinic in New York. Did some crazy awesome treatments, way out there, holistic stuff. And man, it, it took a while, it’s been a journey, but I’m on the other side of that now.
And a lot of these songs on the new album are very reflective of that journey. There’s like some of David low valley songs like, God, what are you doing? And then there’s those cries of victory and praise. And I really feel like even the whole album is like a story of the last few years of my journey of healing.
Sarah Taylor: One of the things that you’re best known for among just other artists that we play on SPIRIT 105.3 is you are just such a loyal and good friend. And a lot of times in the background of other artists’ Instagram’s, I’ll be like, there’s Jaime. There’s Jaime again, like you’re at every baby shower.
You’re at every wedding shower. Like you are constantly celebrating the achievements of others. Is that something that you have had in you since childhood?
Jaime Jamgochian: I love people big, and I think, yeah, I think I love to encourage people. I think that’s just very natural part of who I am. And I’ve always just believed, like celebrate well. And I want to celebrate others well, and I love that I’m celebrated well.
Like I just feel like it’s that whole, what you sew you’re going to reap, and some of my dearest friends are in Christian music and I think just the like mindedness and we’ve just gravitated towards one another. But it hasn’t always been easy to show up to another baby shower or another wedding. I’m like, how many, how many bridesmaid dresses do I have now?
But it’s just that holding hope and faith that, you know, maybe that season hasn’t happened yet for me, but I, I’m not going to let that steal something that’s going on in my friend life. I’m going to be so excited and celebrate for her, and trust that if that’s part of the story and part of God’s plan for me, which I really believe it is, that it’ll happen in his way and in his time. So, yeah, love people and I love food and, you know, we got a thing that just go together.
Sarah Taylor: Also, you, you have such a very pure heart for leading worship. Like, I can’t imagine you doing any music other than. This is just what naturally comes out of you. Talk about when that first took shape.
Jaime Jamgochian: You know, I I’ve been thinking about this a lot, cuz I’ve been doing a lot of interviews for the album and something that came up the other day in one, like even at the young age of nine, 10, I would get behind my piano and just, I would just kind of make up these little songs and like what I would call like flow, like just kind of play. I wasn’t a Christian, you know, until I was 21. I got came to Christ at college my senior year, but I can remember at a young age, I was aware of, I believe it was God’s presence, and his nearness, and his love, and his peace. And I think that’s something that worship music does, right? It ushers in the presence of God, ushers in his love, his peace, his joy, his goodness.
So, even at a young age, I remember feeling that. I can remember my mom would walk in and I just have tears. Streaming down my face at this young age. And she’d be like, are you okay? Are you okay? And I’d be like, do you sense that? Like, you know, I wouldn’t have the right words. I wouldn’t know the vocabulary, the Christian vocabulary now, but I knew there was a higher power. Now, I know it’s God that was moving in and through. So, my greatest joy, Sarah, is writing songs that hopefully connect people to the heart of God, and hopefully make people feel him closer and feel that peace and feel that love and feel that joy. And I pray like hearing you say that I pray it comes from a pure place, cuz that’s like the greatest what should I say compliment? Or that would be like the greatest, you know, thing as a worship leader. Doesn’t mean, my life is perfect, or I do everything right all the time, but I do strive to have a heart of worship, and a heart that glorifies God, you know, in every way. So, thank you. That blessed me.
Sarah Taylor: I love that you had it before you even knew what the name of it was, as a 9-year-old.
Jaime Jamgochian: I mean, the first songs, if we’re being real were like, why doesn’t this boy like me? Like hopeless love songs. Right, right. But, and then I went into jazz music for a little season and, but yeah. As soon as I came to know the Lord, it was definitely like, I want to sing songs about Jesus, and His goodness. I just wrote one yesterday. Look what He’s done, you know,
Sarah Taylor: A similar question in a similar vein about worship music and how it just is inside of you and songwriting… Why do we sing?
Jaime Jamgochian: Ooh, that’s so good. And you know what, when I was so sick, Sarah, I couldn’t sing, I couldn’t get behind my piano. I didn’t have the strength or the mental capacity to like, stand there and, and worship. But I, I think singing is just an outward expression of our worship and our heart and our love for God. But I don’t think you have to sing to worship. I learned in that season for me, laying on my bed, barely functioning, to me worship was just remembering the faithfulness of God. Having a thought of who He was and what He did. That was my song that day; that was my worship. Connecting my heart, connecting my mind, my will, my emotions, the lyrics proclaiming these truths of who our God is. And you know, to me, that’s worship. Now also like other genres too, you know? So, it’s not always, you know, you know, I’m a Biebs fan, so you know that.
Sarah Taylor: I did not know you were a Biebs fan.
Jaime Jamgochian: So, you know, if I’m like jamming out to a Bieber song, I don’t really consider that worship, but you know, hey, he’s coming to know the Lord and he’s overcome Lyme disease. Maybe we just have all these…
Sarah Taylor: You don’t have to defend it. There’s no reason to be defensive. You have plenty of people in your camp.
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What other genres, like, in addition to that, what?
Jaime Jamgochian: So, I do like some pop music. I try to lean towards the cleaner stuff. And I love jazz still. I just appreciate it so much. Having studied jazz piano. I love peaceful, quiet, like glowy kind of, maybe worship music you wouldn’t hear on a Sunday morning at a church service, but more of the just abstract kind of, free flowing stuff I find on YouTube. Or artists that nobody’s ever heard of that I’m like, oh my gosh, this is amazing, you know? That kind of gravitates, that’s what gravitates my heart a lot.
Sarah Taylor: And then as far as the music like that, we play on SPIRIT 105.3, and when you think of your friends and some stuff that they’ve recently released, is there a song right now, that’s just sort of like your anthem, like you’ve texted that person and you’ve been like, whoa?
Jaime Jamgochian: Oh, gosh, that is such a good question. I, the song that came up that really resonated, and I want to get it right, oh, come to, oh, to, is that elevation music?
Sarah Taylor: Yes.
Jaime Jamgochian: Okay. So, I don’t know them personally, but that bridge, oh, what a savior… like I just, I can remember hearing that in that season I was in, and it like shook me, and I was like, No matter what, you know, like come to the alter. Lay it all down again, lay the frustrations, the disappointments, the sickness, lay it all at his feet. And that song really ministered to me in the, in the last season.
Currently, I just heard Francesca’s new Christmas album and I, I mean, we’re dear friends, but I obsessed with it. And I love that she took like some of my favorites I grew up singing Rudolph, and you just like childhood favorites and of course made them so cool. Her voice is like butter, but yeah, so I’m really into that right now. And it’s hot in Nashville, so, I like the more I play Christmas music, the more I’m like, come on fall, come on winter.
Sarah Taylor: I know, because I know you’re in Nashville, but I just, I always… you’re so you feel at home when you come here to the Pacific Northwest, if anyone’s ever looking for Jaime, she’s usually on the Kirkland waterfront really good food.
Jaime Jamgochian: Yes. You know me well, or in Winthrop. Yes. I love, you know, I love Seattle. I prayed. I’m like, God, am I supposed to be back there? And I just haven’t had that release, but you know, I’m like a Seattleite. And I’m from Boston though, so, I spent a lot of time in Boston this summer as well. People are like, where do you live? Boston, Seattle, Nashville. I’m like. Can I live at all three places?
Sarah Taylor: Well, before we wrap it up, you know, you’ve been so gracious to talk about your friends and their music, let’s pick one other song besides a beautiful story off of your album. Just whatever one comes to your mind in your heart, share the story behind it, and then the title of your project, where people can find it, how they connect with you on socials…
Jaime Jamgochian: okay, can I do two? And I’ll do ’em really quick.
Sarah Taylor: Cause of course, of course you can.
Jaime Jamgochian: So, the album’s called All Things and one of the songs off of it is All Things For My Good, and it really, I feel like is the cry of seeing God work something so negative for good in my life. And so, that song is special. And I, I really pray that that song reaches people that do feel stuck or do feel like they cannot climb out. I remember when I was as sick as I could have been, I pulled up that demo and that was the one that just kind of washed over me.
I wrote it with Ben Calhoun from Citizen Way, and Micah Cooper from Hawk Nelson. So, it’s so funny, cuz those are like rock bands and it’s the most heartfelt worship song you know? But the one that’s really it seems to be connecting with people means a lot to me is called Just The Way You Are, and that’s what Danny Gokey, who I know SPIRIT plays a ton of.
And I was so honored to be able to do a duet with him. But I wrote that when I got back from the Philippines and was so stirred by some stories of some young women who had been rescued out of human trafficking. And talk about rip your heart out, mama bear, like coming out in every way. That chorus, just if, if you could see the way he looks at you, hear him whisper to your heart, he loves you just the way you are.
It just kinda poured out. And it’s one of those natural songs. It just, and then I got with some co-writers later on to spice it up, but that one means a lot because I feel like we’re living in times right now with everything going on, we need to be reminded. Let’s not complicate the gospel. Let’s not complicate our faith. Let’s just come to Jesus just the way we are and let him work out the rest period. so that one means a lot to me. And just singing with Danny, I just, I feel like it’s a really beautiful, almost like a lullaby that I pray people would sense their heavenly father kind of singing over them to bring just heart healing and heart encouragement.
Sarah Taylor: And to connect with Jaime, you are pretty good at the ‘Gram.
Jaime Jamgochian: I’m trying. I mean, that thing is hard. I don’t understand those algorithms, but yes! JAIME JAMGOCHIAN, spelled, J A I M E the French way. I’m not French. I don’t know why my parents did that; J A I M E and then JAMGOCHIAN. Good luck. J A M G O C H I A N .
Sarah Taylor: Have you ever, have you ever wondered if like the spelling of just the, the sheer, you know, how, like sometimes you can’t handle like one more password in your life? You’re like, you almost want to complete a transaction, but you just can’t get past the new password. I sometimes wonder if someone’s trying to find your music to download or whatever, and then they’re just like, J A M I G… Yeah. And they just, they give up, they just give up.
Jaime Jamgochian: No, it’s been an issue. It really has been an issue, but I’m like, I can’t change my name. That just feels so fake. I know people do it, but that’s not me. So…
Sarah Taylor: Push through, push through to find real Jaime Jamgochian. Well, okay. So, so that’s how we connect with you on Instagram to find music. We’ll link up to it here, as well as the lyric video for, for Beautiful Story. And as always, it’s a pleasure to talk to you and yeah, we just, we love you.
Jaime Jamgochian: Love you, Sarah,
Sarah Taylor: Always so wonderful to catch up with Jaime. And she has given you all the ways that you can contact her, plus we’ll link up with the show notes. Our thanks to her, our thanks to Scott Karow, our wonderful producer, and Terra Firma, as well as you for taking the time to listen and subscribe. Of course, we always appreciate it when you take a few moments to let us know who you’d love to hear as a guest on the Passion Meets Purpose podcast. And we will see you in two weeks.
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