“My Jesus, my Savior,
Lord, there is none like You;
All of my days
I want to praise
The wonders of Your mighty love.

My comfort, my shelter,
Tower of refuge and strength;
Let every breath, all that I am
Never cease to worship You.

Shout to the Lord, all the earth,
Let us sing
Power and majesty, praise to the (King);
Mountains bow down (mountains bow down) and the seas will roar
At the sound of Your name.

I sing for joy at the work of Your hands,
Forever I’ll love You, forever I’ll stand,
Nothing compares to the promise I have in you.” ~ Darlene Zschech

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I hadn’t heard this song in several years when it came on my random playlist on Spotify the other morning.  The memories that came with it were overwhelming and I was soon in tears as I drove.

I know that certain smells can cause memories to surface – when I smell honeysuckle it reminds me of the house we lived in with my mom near the Kansas City Zoo.  In the summer, with the windows open, there was honeysuckle growing wild along the fence behind our house and in the evening we could hear the sea lions barking at times.  We lived there until I was five years old.  I also remember swinging on the swingset in the front yard and singing the country songs I heard from the radio in the car.

This past week when I heard the first few notes of “Shout to the Lord” I instantly recalled driving down a very curvy section of Holmes Road in Missouri on a rainy night.  I had just recently moved to Drexel and things were rough — physically, financially, mentally, spiritually — anyway you could cut it, in any aspect of life, we were struggling.  Added to this was the time of year . . . it was summer, just a few days before the 4th of July which is the anniversary of my oldest son’s death.  I was at a low spot when this song came on the radio in 2002.

My comfort, my shelter,
Tower of refuge and strength;
Let every breath, all that I am
Never cease to worship You.

I was questioning whether I could worship a God that felt so far away from me.  When I closed my eyes at night to sleep, all I could picture was an open sea and sky.  No land in sight, no boats, no clouds even .. .. .. simply water stretching as far as the eye could see.  For someone who could not swim at that time and was afraid of water, this was not a comforting thought or scenario.  For whatever reason, this particular night, these words struck a chord with me.

Could I worship God when I felt so alone? With every breath that I had, could I rely on someone and something I couldn’t see to be my comfort?  Was I able and willing to give all that I was to do so? How did I get past the doubts?

I sing for joy at the work of Your hands,
Forever I’ll love You, forever I’ll stand,
Nothing compares to the promise I have in you.

What if I didn’t feel or agree that the work of His hands was cause for joy? I felt that I should have been celebrating my son’s 10th birthday, not the 10th anniversary of his passing.  Let me assure you, I had a full-blown pity party going on.

As the song played on the radio that night, I finally let loose with all those emotions and fears and doubts.  I wrestled with my thoughts and my emotions and by the time the song was over, I could positively say that I was able to sing for joy and worship Him with every breath in my body.  That evening in the car between God and myself cemented my faith and helped me overcome that particular low point.

To hear the song again in the present day and in my present circumstances was an awesome (albeit emotional) reminder of how far I’ve come since that night in 2002.