May 8, 2005 in City

Rockin” moms making time for joyful music

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Jed Conklin photo

Door of Hope members, from left, Mardi Paulson, Michelle Estelle, Heidi Swartz, Kristen Benz and Lauri Maher will perform at the Big Easy for a Mother’s Day brunch.
(Full-size photo)

Except for the leopard print fetish and the fact they’re in a rock band, these women are perhaps no different from most moms.

Collectively, each week, they clean 12 toilets and do 46 loads of laundry. They care for a total of nine children, including one child adopted from Haiti and a girl from Kosovo, through the Big Sisters program. All together, they own six dogs, a cat, two guinea pigs and, at last count, seven fish.

But somehow, on top of their hectic professional and personal lives that include strenuous hobbies such as triathlons and tap dancing, these women – all in their 40s – actually make time to sing and praise the Lord.

Once dubbed as “the church ladies” or “Christian chicks,” this all-woman band called Door of Hope has received enough acclaim in recent months that it scored a gig at the Big Easy for Mother’s Day. The group also will sing the national anthem for Hoopfest.

It’s a far cry from their early days playing at church services, women’s retreats and Reardan’s Mule Days. But they refuse to let success go to their heads. As working moms, there’s little time to waste stroking egos, they said.

Sure, they get a rush from being on stage, acknowledged drummer and clinical psychologist Michelle Estelle. But their mission as Christian musicians hasn’t changed: to spread the Gospel; to play their music in prisons, retirement homes and other humble venues; to lift the spirits of people who feel lost or lonely and in need of God’s hope.

“Faith in Jesus Christ is the foundation of our lives,” said Kristen Renz, a piano teacher who plays keyboards for the band. It fuels their music and ministry, she said, and provides them with the energy they need to juggle their many obligations.

But please don’t get the impression that they’re preachy about their faith, Renz pleaded. Although they sing about God, they’re really a group of down-to-earth, middle-age women who drink too much coffee, worry too much about their weight and experience exasperating moments when they, too, wish they could duct-tape their kids to the wall.

“We have a deep faith, but we try to be real,” said Estelle, mother to three children. “We’re not perfect, but we embrace that. By being honest and loving life, that’s how we show we’re Christians.”

All members of Presbyterian churches in the Spokane area, the women of Door of Hope started performing together about three years ago. They sang and played for their own church choirs, but it was only after they worked together during a women’s retreat that it occurred to them to start their own band. It took a while to come up with a name, they said, but they eventually decided on Door of Hope from the Old Testament book of Hosea.

“Our prayer is that through the music we offer, you will see a glimpse of the door of hope that God offers to each and every one of us,” according to the band’s Web site.

Many who have heard them play have given them rave reviews. During a recent visit to Geiger Corrections Center, the band led a chapel service that spurred dozens of inmates to get up from their seats and sway their bodies to the music while giving thanks to God, said Rich Withers, the former prison chaplain.

“They were on their feet, praising the Lord with their hands in the air,” he recalled. “The presence of the Lord was very strong.”

There’s no pretense when they play at places like the prison, said Lauri Maher, an acoustic guitarist who also volunteers as a Big Sister. “It’s the purest form of worship, it’s very powerful,” she said. “It’s all about Jesus to us.”

Their goal is to help people experience worship in a new way, said Mardi Paulson, who sings and plays tambourine and djembe, a percussion instrument.

Because of their busy lives, Door of Hope doesn’t have regular rehearsals. Instead, they get together to jam about a couple of times a month – sometimes in their own homes or in the music room on the third floor of First Presbyterian Church, where Estelle is a member.

Practice time, like everything else, gets squeezed between the kids’ soccer practices, their own day jobs and the hours it takes to care for their elderly parents and in-laws.

“There’s never enough time in a day,” bemoaned bass guitarist Heidi Swartz.

When they get together, they often bring along their many children and pets, a chaotic combination that they’ve learned to ignore as they focus on music.

When they perform, their husbands serve as the roadies, hauling all the instruments and sound equipment.

These women have learned to prioritize their lives, said Dirk Swartz, Heidi’s husband.

“Everybody fills up their lives with something,” said Dirk, himself a musician and the producer of the band’s CD. “These gals are all ministry-minded. God comes first, and then their families come second. Everything else just falls into place. I don’t know how they juggle it all.”

Despite the craziness of their schedules, they would never even consider giving up the band. It’s a sisterhood, said Paulson, who teaches Spanish at Whitworth College. Besides playing music together, they’re best friends, she said.

Naturally, there are moments when they get on each other’s nerves, the women acknowledged. Once, after an especially stressful rehearsal, they got into a big fight over something they can’t even remember anymore.

They met for coffee the next day and talked it out. As older, “more mature” women, there’s no room for egos or petty issues, they said.

On a chain around their necks, each woman wears a pendant – a silver circle with the engraved words “Faith, Family, Friends.”

“It symbolizes the most important things in our lives,” said Renz.

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