Why these songs exist

Some seasons take nearly everything from you. These songs came out of one.

Carl Prox grew up around music. His father was a professional drummer who studied under Murray Spivack, and his mother was a gifted vocalist and guitarist. But home wasn't easy, and neither was school. He was bullied, developed a stutter, and got labeled the "special ed" kid until he started to believe he was stupid.

Around the same time, he was abused by a family member. He told no one. For years he carried the shame by himself, sure that no one would understand.

In high school it all caught up with him. One night around 2 a.m., he had decided he was done. Instead, something pushed him out the door to run. Seven miles later he dropped to his knees and gave his life to God. Soon he was drumming in his youth group's worship band and writing songs of his own.

Then the ground fell out again. In 2008, his senior year, his family lost everything and had to move. He stayed behind to finish wrestling season, sleeping on friends' couches and a few nights on the street, until a friend's family took him in.

In 2011 he joined The World Race, eleven months across eleven countries doing ministry work. Somewhere on that trip he told his story out loud for the first time. The more people he told, the freer he became, and the more other people found the courage to tell theirs. On that same trip, in Transnistria, he met Daria, the woman he would marry.

In 2018 the songs he had been writing for years became Transcend the Skies, his first record, as PROX. The next year, Carl and Daria lost their son, Elijah.

There isn't a clean way to describe what that does to a person. It reorders everything. He sold the business he had built, enlisted in the Army as an Infantryman at 30, and wrote the book Armor Your Mind. In 2025, everything he had carried through those years became WHITEFIRE.

PROX was a place to search. WHITEFIRE became a place to stand.

The music doesn't pretend the dark isn't there, and it doesn't glorify it either. It's honest about loss, shame, noise and the slow work of rebuilding.

None of this is meant to build a name. It's for whoever is listening right now: the one lying awake, the one smiling through it, the one who never told anyone, the one who stopped believing anyone would come. You're not forgotten. These songs point to Jesus, who never left.