The Songs I Sing

Do you ever feel like music has a way of meeting you right where you are in life? I can remember plenty of times when my heart was so on fire, but I couldn’t find the words to express how I felt. Then I would turn on the radio, or now Pandora and Itunes, and stumble over a song that perfectly expressed everything I had been trying to say.

I remember surviving through middle school by the saving graces of Mariah Carey’s “Hero”- feel free to mock me, I admit thinking it was the deepest, greatest, most heart-felt song I had ever heard.

I remember listening to John Mayer’s “Quiet” every Sunday night during my freshman year of High school, grateful that someone else in the world knew what it was like to not be able to turn off their brain at night.

I remember being broken-hearted my junior year of HS and finding Ben Harper’s “Walk Away.”

I remember my friend Nicole showing me a song called “Love is Waiting” by Brooke Fraiser to encourage me when I felt so alone my sophomore year in college.

I remember walking to school every day in Argentina while listening to a playlist my mom made for me and learning to sing Fernando Ortega’s “Give Me Jesus” in Spanish.

Even this past summer I found a song called “Take All the Sky You Need” by Ellis Paul- I remember thinking, “Wow, that is exactly what my parents have been trying to tell me since I graduated!”

My point is this- music is my therapy. Any my favorite kind of music therapy is when I can listen to the lyrics of a song, close my eyes, and transform every line into a conversation I am having with God. Does that even make sense to you? Allow me to explain, before you think I am crazy. I’ll take a love song, an angry song, a sad song, a searching song, and apply it to where I am in my own life.

For example, “I’m There Too” by Michelle Featherstone is a song about two people who are so in love that they have become the same person, feeling everything the other person feels. However, I sing this song and think about all of the places in the Bible that God promises to always be by my side, to never let me go, and to welcome me into Heaven some day. When she sings, “I see myself in you, in everything you do…I see me in your eyes, and I’m the tears you cry,” I think about how God cares about me so much, and how every single thing He does is for my benefit, even when I don’t understand it. It makes me remember that He loves me so much He sent is son to die for me, that the tears He cried were for me! So, for me this song becomes a poem of comfort for today and security for tomorrow- all wonderful gifts from God that I don’t deserve.

To listen to the song click here. But while you listen, maybe you could make it your own conversation. I’ve included the lyrics below, and have put all of my parts of the conversation in black and all of “God’s replies” in red (I wonder where I got that grand idea). I hope you enjoy! It’s an amazing song!

"I'm There Too"

I see myself in you

In everything you do

And when you’re all alone at night

You know I am by your side

Cuz I’m there too

I see me in your eyes

And I’m the tears you cry

And when you fall apart

And are dying from a broken heart

I’m there too

I see your footsteps in the sand

As you journey on across this land

But if you should fall on your way

Then I will carry you that day

Cuz I’m there

I’m there too

Yeah I’m there too

I see your face in mine

And I know there’ll come a time

When you will take my hand

And I will understand

That you’re there too

When you will take my hand

And I will understand

That you’re there

You’re there too