for the heavy heart...

I wasn't in a hurry to post this song orginally since it's so raw (a.k.a. doesn't sound all that great ;) ... I'm actually playing the guitar which I don't really know how to play so you'll have to listen past the strumming to the heart behind it, but I do believe it might be meant for someone to hear right now...

I feel like this week I've heard more sad stories and received more bad news from friends and loved ones than I have in the entire year leading up to it.  There are just so many people going through very tough things and dealing with serious heart break.

A lady I know and love lost her husband a few years ago.  His death was sudden, she was young and devastated, and I can't even try to imagine what the whole experience must have felt like for her.  In the days, weeks, and months following that life-changing loss though, I got to watch her as she immersed herself in an all-out pursuit of God.  Rather than agreeing with self-pity and heaviness - which I can honestly and confidently say I would have been doing in her shoes - she devoted every minute and all the energy she had to reading and meditating on and dwelling in God's word.  She made worship her hobby and confession her sustenance.  And she surrounded herself with people who she knew would compel and encourage her to continue that pursuit.   

Here we are just a few years down the road and that woman's life is a beautiful picture of God's faithfulness to redeem.  Of course now anyone looking at her life can see and appreciate that very clearly... but she knew THEN what everyone else can see from her life NOW:  that God's word is true and is powerful for the person who is willing to take it off the page and put it into their real life.  

I wrote the song you can hear below for that friend when I first heard the news of her husband's death.  I couldn't understand why, and I knew she might struggle with the same miserable question.... but I also knew that in the times when you don't understand and when things are at their worst, He is the only one worth turning to and He is faithful.
         Your words of truth I'll cling to
         Lover of my soul I'll sing to
         God as I bring to you my questions and my tears
         Make me whole.       

If you are hurting or sick, there are a lot of people out there who will offer you TREATMENT... but there is only one who can make you WHOLE - no scars, no side effects, nothing missing, nothing broken, no leftover pieces, no emotional residue, no empty promises  - and that is the God in Matthew 11:25 who says:

                  " Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."

Click here to listen:  "I'll cling to"