Stories behind the songs on the Surrender Album
BURNED BUT BEAUTIFUL
You wrap yourself around me when the danger comes too near
You envelope me in your safety
Though the flames are to be feared
Your presence ever marks me
Though the scars do their part to darken me
You are the one who saves me, unseen but always there
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Singed but saved Safe but broken Burned but beautiful
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Sitting in your safety, You’re standing by my side
Stroking me gently as you push my fears aside
Father fully faithful Forever by my side
Silently protecting Your presence will ever abide.
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Singed but saved Safe but broken Burned but beautiful
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Bright light illuminates You You’re completely surrounding me
Your love incomprehensible Protecting and providing for me
My hand You cover, my heart You hold
My forever is always in Your control.
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Singed but saved Safe but broken Burned but beautiful
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When I was 3 years old my family & I went to spend time on Lake Erie. After a day on the lake, we returned to the vacation home of my aunt’s boyfriend. All the other children were playing outside, but since I was so small my parents took me inside with them to change out of our bathing suits. The story I’m told is that both my parents knew when they walked in that something was wrong because they could smell gas in the air. The man who owned the property, who was standing by the stove reached for a match to strike, evidently to try & light the oven. In that moment that the match hit the box & the spark was lit, all the gas from the leak that had filled the air lit up as well. The explosion was instantaneous & loud enough to bring the neighbors over in the following moments of confusion.
From what I understand, there was so much gas in the air that the whole room exploded. A shelf that was above my head fell & landed on my head and I still bear the small bald spot where it landed. In shock we walked outside & the neighbors who had come out to investigate called the police. I’ve been told that my mother asked my dad if we would be ok & he assured her everything was fine even thought my sister has told me she will never forget the smell of our burnt skin & hair. You see we were in shock at that point & weren’t really feeling the effects of pain quite yet even though everyone who looked at us knew the situation was bad!
Two ambulances showed up and they took my mom & dad in one ambulance, with myself & my aunt’s boyfriend in the other. I’m sure they did that because my dad could communicate with my mom who is deaf, but as a child, that was just the beginning of the trauma that the next 7 weeks would hold for a little girl who felt abandoned & alone with no parents to protect or comfort her.
They took us to the Toledo hospital and because it was 3 hours away from our home, my 2 grandmothers could only come & visit on the weekends since they both had jobs. My parents shared a hospital room on another floor and said they were only allowed to see me a few times during the stay. When they did see me, I begged to be held by them, but because of the pain from the burns over most of their bodies, my dad could barely hold me for a few minutes on his lap before the pain became unbearable.
All of this I understand intellectually as an adult. I know the details and the reasons for all of this. But as an adult, I have no conscious memories of the explosion or time in the hospital. This bothered me immensely & the older I got, the more I asked God to show me what happened. I believed that the memories were stored somewhere inside my subconscious brain and that God could bring them back to conscious thought again if he chose to.
You see, I bore the physical scars that I had to look at every day on my arms, legs & face, yet had no memory of how I got them besides one image that was burned in my head. It was of the front of the house where the accident happened. I pictured a long one story house and as a young adult, we went back once to look at the house and the image in my head matched the reality of what the outside looked like so I knew that for some reason my mind had retained that one memory of the day.
About 5 years ago I went to a worship conference and during a time of music my eyes were closed because I have found that is how I can concentrate the best. I saw a series of pictures in my head that disturbed me greatly. First I saw a hospital room with a little girl all by herself. Next a water bath where bandages from burns are removed & the girl was alone in it. I knew the girl was me & that I was all alone through the worst experience of my childhood. I wept and grieved for the following weeks as I struggled to understand why God showed me this. Was it simply to reinforce how alone I had been- unseen & unknown through my vulnerabilities as a small child?
But about a month later I was at a different conference with my husband for pastors & spouses and it had been a few days of incredible worship & ministering to my soul as well as simply resting each afternoon. We were singing together & again my eyes were closed. The song that was playing in the background was Good, Good Father. Suddenly I flashed through a series of images that were almost identical to the series of images I wept over a few weeks earlier at the worship seminar… with a slight change to each.
This time the images went from a small girl being held on the lap of God the Father in the hospital room, then God the Father standing beside the tank of water holding the hand of the girl in the water, then back to the hospital room. The girl is sleeping in a darkened room & God the father is sitting in a chair pulled up to the side of the bed, leaning forward as a concerned parent does, stroking her forehead. Those images moved quickly & I was touched by them & given time to think about them.
During the next song, the images that came were of Jesus completely enveloping me a second before the explosion- as if rolling me up into a small ball & wrapping his arms & legs around me. This would explain why I have no recollection of the explosion- I was kept from seeing it as well as much less scarring on my body than the others in the room.
The last image was standing outside looking at the back of the house & looking at an incredibly bright light/presence with the vague outline of arms extended outward & slightly upward. The light was so brilliant but I knew that he was there to protect us & was over all of it. I knew it was Jesus standing there with an explosion of light.
This explains why I have always had an image of the house (the only memory that I held on to all these years). I am sure God’s presence was there & whether or not I could see Him in that moment or if I could just sense Him, it burned into my memory…. But all that was left in the memory was the house behind. I’m convinced His holy presence imprinted the moment much deeper into my conscious than I can understand.
This series of visions was so incredibly healing & in that moment I realized I had been asking the wrong question all these years. I had thought I wanted to remember what had happened, thinking that would somehow help me. But what God showed me instead was WHERE HE WAS when it all happened. He answered the deeper question in the soul of a terrified, lonely 3 year old girl who didn’t understand why it happened. And the answer that satisfied & healed my soul was that Jesus the Son was there with me when it happened and God the Father was there with me in the hospital. I was never alone through any of it even though I thought I was.
Immediately after seeing these scenes, the words to this song came to me quickly and easily. To paraphrase a speaker I once heard. ‘God can heal in a second what we in our own efforts couldn’t fix in years of effort.’ The words to this song are personal and were given to me specifically because inside my 40 year old body, was and is still the soul of a 3 year old girl. Someday I may know why it took that long for God to show me that vision, but I am grateful I have seen it now. It completely changed my perspective of life & situations and I can’t tell you how often in the months and years since then that I thought of those pictures & how much comfort it has given.
Trust & Obey
Lord I give You control
I trust You with my soul
You’ve never failed me yet
No matter what people have said
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You’re faithful & true
No matter what I do
Your love for me is real
No matter what I feel
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So I choose to follow You everyday
Making the most of the choices that come my way
Staying firm on the path that goes Your way
I chose to follow, trust & obey
Yes I choose to follow, trust & obey!
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One day a few years into our journey of adoption, I was praying earnestly for our adopted son. I could see there were certain key things that were important for him to learn & follow & so I was focusing on those as I prayed.
I wanted to claim those truths for him & have something that he could say or sing to remind himself of these truths. I happened to be in the shower when these words began to come to me. I was so afraid I would forget them so I repeated the 1st part over & over until I could get out & write them down!
This song came about as my prayer that I wanted to sing with him together at night before bed that we could claim together for his life. It flowed quickly & easily & the tune was one that we sang accapella together at bed with just me beating a rhythm out on my legs.
On the recording he is the one playing the cajon & singing along.
LAY IT DOWN
Little boy, sleeping on the street
Wraps his blanket tight around his head
To keep the demons & fears away
He wonders why he’s here, what part he plays
What fault is his? He’s filled with confusion & fear!
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So he grabs control any chance he gets
And holds on as if to save his own life
His world is spinning out of control!
But the tighter he holds on, the looser his grip is
Til it’s all been taken away
And one day he wakes up and it’s all gone
And what’s left is a little boy, who scared & thinks he’s all alone
So he builds high walls to protect himself
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Come weary one, Come lay it down
You fought so hard to defend (protect) yourself
God’s got you now, God had you then
God’s been there all along, to the very end
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Give up what you think you can control
So it will stop controlling you
You can let it go, release your fears to Him
Lay it all down, Let Him defend you now, And begin again.
For almost 7 years I have watched our son (whom we brought in to our home to adopt 3 days after he turned 10) wrap blankets around his head at night when he gets in bed so that only a little bit of his face is showing. He craves the comfort of blankets around his head & the weight of many other blankets over his body in order to fall asleep. I’ve never known anyone else to wrap their head in blankets and it has always stood out to me as such an important piece of the coping skills he has developed due to the hard beginnings he had in life.
We have spoken very little about his earlier childhood, but the pieces I have collected from his scattered memories and the few documents we have, as well as the evidence lived out every day in his life, paints a vivid picture of a child who learned to do everything he could to protect himself.
Because the brain has been built to adapt to the circumstances we are placed in, those patterns of thought and action that are developed, especially at a young age, act as trenches that are dug deeper & deeper each time a behavior or thought pattern follows the same route. The more times those thoughts & actions are repeated over many years, the harder it is to retrain your brain to new thoughts & actions.
Such is the life that we have lived as we have fought with him & for him to develop new & healthier patterns in not only his life, but ours as well.
Yet, in trying to help him, it has become vividly clear that he is not the only one trying to control those around him. I too have viscously & fiercely tried to grab control as my life has felt more & more out of control.
The beauty in this song and in our story is that the truth sung about is for both my son & I and everyone who has carried a burden. If I can learn to give up control over my circumstances, then my circumstances will stop controlling me & I in turn, will stop trying to control those around me. They too, can learn to let God have control & my prayer is that we all would see how weary we are, & that we would lay our burdens down.
There is a little child inside all of us that carries wounds and fears and our tendency is to build the walls high around us. But God had us during our darkest, hardest times.
He has us now and He always will.
He invites us to lay down those burdens we’re carrying.
Requiem for a Lost Life
A moment ago the world seemed normal
But then they came with news that changed your life.
Now life will never be the same
cause they chose another path that brought you pain.
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As your world silently implodes within you,
Right is wrong and up is down
Or so they try to tell you; They’ve misled you
You feel your mind crashing & spinning, your stomach is churning
Your heart has stopped; Your future has died.
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Chorus: Precious One, I was with you
Long before you knew the hurt, I was standing by your side
Precious one, I’m still with you
Holding you steady when your world has fallen apart
Precious one, I’ll be with you
Though others have failed you, I’ll never turn away
Precious one, I’ll protect you
From the enemies on the outside & the enemy within.
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There was a time when life seemed normal
But now you’ll share the news that changed your life
And you wonder what others will say about you
What they will think, how they will judge?
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And all of the shame & the pain & the blame are swirling
Around you & you wonder what others will think.
The truth & the lies & the gossip are so overwhelming
Will the pain ever stop? Will you have peace?
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Repeat Chorus
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Even when life does not feel normal
Hold onto truth: God is with you
A dear friend of mine called me one day with news that was life-changing for her. In an instant the trajectory of her life shifted from where she thought she was headed, to a completely different direction, out of no choice of her own.
I don’t know exactly how she felt or how her heart was breaking, but I did get a small picture of the grief she experienced. As I sat thinking, praying & grieving for her one day, the words flowed onto the page as I imagined myself in her situation. I realized that the reason the grief was so deep is because her future (as she had imagined it) had just died, but there would be no closure through a funeral. Instead, she would have to find ways to cope even as she wondered how people would see her.
But the message I felt God speaking into the situation was that she was so precious to Him. She might have felt like she was being abandoned & set aside by someone who once was very special. But God was declaring how precious she was to Him, no matter what she had done or been told.
God was there in the past, before she knew the hurt.
He was still with her & would continue to be with her.
And he would be her protector & provider,
not only from those who appeared to be her enemy,
but the enemy she might become to herself.
Satan tries to get us to believe we are at fault, we are to blame & so we begin to become our own worst enemy. But God declares we are precious & that He will protect us.
And you just need to hold onto the truth that God is with you through all of it.
REDEEMED
Torn apart, Broken down,
Frozen dreams, failed attempts
Lies believed, fears that freeze,
Life gone wrong then truth revealed
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Joined together, built back up
Dreams made new, successes won
Truth believed, trust that frees
Life made right when truth redeemed
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Lord I believe, that you can see
All that I can be, when I am free
From all the fears of what may be
Til I chose to see all you have for me
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Lord you have come, you have redeemed
You have made right all the wrongs against me
I give my life, I give my flaws,
I give my all just to be redeemed.