From the Depths: The Song

Several years ago, I began to song-write my way through prayer and Bible study. A friend, through the prompting of the Holy Spirit, issued the invitation for me to begin writing songs, and my soul readily dove in.

I never considered myself to be a musician, let alone a song-writer, and so for the past three or four years, the songs have remained between me and God. I could not stop writing, but I also could never bring myself to share the songs. As far as I was concerned, they were part of my prayer journal.

In my experience, however, and according to those who live active lives of art ministry, God often calls us out of the safety of obscurity into a place of visible ministry. After all, we are His workmanship, created before the foundations of the world to do good works in Christ Jesus.

Obscurity, though, has always been my safety zone. In fact, for the last decade, God has been in the process of teaching me that my life mission of “disappearing” is not His calling for my life.

I have never written a song with the purpose of recording it. I have never even written a song in order to share it. My songs feel as personal and private as my deepest journal page, written never to be opened again. But this has been a shame-based attitude.

Toward the end of the summer, an incredible man of God sat down with me and told me that he heard that I wrote songs and that it was his goal to get me into the studio for a recording session. I nearly collapsed under the overwhelming discomfort of considering sharing a song with one person.

Three months after the invitation, I reached out to Martin and told him to sign me up for a slot in the studio. On November third, we met up with Carter and spent a couple hours recording a song the Holy Spirit had written on my heart a couple weeks prior. I walked out of the studio that day with what Jordan, Martin, and Carter considered to be a pretty good song.

I wasn’t so sure.

Stepping out of our comfort zone to follow Jesus is super uncomfortable, and I have experienced profound paralysis with the release of my first song. I simply could not bring myself to post it or share it. For the past month and a half, I have tried to forget that my song even exists, but my sweet husband won’t let me do that, and I know that God is calling me to step out once again.

The song is called “From the Depths,” and it emerges from a place of deep surrender. God has called me to my knees over and over during the past couple years, and as I have prayed through the pandemic, political unrest, overwhelming isolation and loneliness, and deep angst, God has called me lower and lower to a place of repentance.

The more I pray for awakening and revival of my heart as well as for the world, the deeper and lower God calls me into humility. Revival (in my own heart) begins with repentance: a recognition of my own state of brokenness, my own destructive patterns that continue the cycle of brokenness, and an agreement with God that it is time to seek forgiveness and allow Him to transform me, my heart, and my whole life.

A friend told me that this song won’t be popular because no one likes repentance. That’s okay, because it was never written with popularity in mind. I wrote it in my journey to the depths.

So here it is:

From The Depths