Have you ever experienced anxiety or despair so intense that you just couldn’t fall asleep? Perhaps you tried everything to place your trust in the Lord, yet thoughts of worry intruded into your thoughts and fear overwhelmed your emotions, keeping you awake.
What is the last thing you would feel like doing as you struggled to sleep?
When I remember really difficult struggles I went through in the early years of my marriage, I’d say that the last thing I would feel like doing on a sleepless night would be to offer praise and thanksgiving to God.
Yet, the Bible tells us to praise the Lord at all times. ALL times!
Psalm 34:1 has us pray: "I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth."
How can we praise God in the midst of despair and tragedy? Something about that doesn’t even feel right. It almost seems as though we would be lying to ourselves. Especially if we have lost a loved one or are experiencing a tragedy, dealing with addictions or health issues or sicknesses or family problems or difficulties in our marriage.... The list is endless.
“Surely I cannot praise God when we just lost our son.”
“I cannot praise God when I just got diagnosed with cancer.”
“I cannot praise God when I have been injured in an accident.”
“I cannot praise God...” Let your heart finish the sentence.
In Scripture, there are many instances in which the people of God did give him thanks and praise, even in the most terrible circumstances. A very good example of this is in the book of Job. Job literally lost his entire family, all of his livestock, all of his wealth. Then his body broke out in boils, and he was wracked with illness. How could Job lift his voice in praise and say: “Blessed be the name of the Lord”?
Yet in Job 1:21, we hear him praying precisely this: “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
I am no Job, though I have experienced my fair share of sleepless nights. Nights when I felt so isolated, overwhelmed with worry and despair. Early on in my marriage, we experienced three miscarriages. My husband and I wanted children so badly. I kept feeling like there was something wrong with me. I wondered why the Lord allowed this pain to go on. The last thing I wanted to do was give thanks and praise to the Lord. I am just being honest!
Let’s pause right here. What’s going through your heart right now? What would you like to tell God about some situation in your life that keeps you up at night. It’s important to acknowledge what is real within you. It is essential to hear the voice of your hurt, or fear, or anger.
Did Job whisper his words of praise quietly? Did he proclaim them with strong faith? Did the words emerge from a heart that was struggling, even raging? We’ll never know with absolute certainty.
Ultimately, Job acknowledged that everything he had was from the Lord.
When I think about it, I suppose that if Job figured the Lord could give, then the Lord could also take away. And if he could take away, then he also could give again! In his praise, Job was acknowledging the holy sovereignty of the Lord. This is the kind of faith and trust that moves mountains. This is the kind of faith that is a pure gift from the Lord.
Even though I couldn’t bring my heart to praise the Lord after my miscarriage, I did notice something. I began to pray: Thank you, Jesus, for loving me. Thank you, Jesus, for the gift of this circumstance. I don’t understand what’s going on or what you’re doing, but I trust you, or at least I want to. When I prayed in this way, I began to notice a shift in my interior life.
It was this transformation unfolding in my heart that inspired a song I wrote: “My Soul Finds Rest.” Somehow, a lot of my songs just end up becoming prayers. It seems it is through the music and the words that the Lord gets me through the hard times and lets me celebrate with him in the good ones. Here is my favorite verse of the song:
“I know one thing the enemy really hates,
to give God praise in the middle of the pain.”
For me to sing this, it truly took an act of faith and trust in the Lord! On our own, when we struggle by ourselves, we can easily be driven to despair. By ourselves, we will lose hope. But if we turn our gaze toward our Father who sees and knows all, if we give him our trust, the grip of despair begins to loosen. My husband and I have been married for twelve years now. The Lord, in his goodness, has blessed us with 3 beautiful children and 3 little intercessors in heaven!
Before the mercy of a generous God, I can only say, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow”!
I am reminded of the Psalmist David—a man after God’s own heart. He prays at the beginning of Psalm 103:
“Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and all that is within me,
bless his holy name.”
The psalmist is commanding his soul to bless the Lord. Why? Because he knew his flesh was weak, but his spirit was willing!
This is what I’m trying to express with my song. The melody feels sad. The tone feels lonely. And that was important to me because this is what it feels like when a person is in the throes of despair. Sure, we can try to pretend we aren’t sad or mad or hopeless. God, however, knows everything about us. He knows the feelings that deluge our hearts!
But it’s about looking up to him in the middle of the pain and saying, “I am not doing okay, Lord. But I know you are holding me.”
It’s about praising and giving thanks to him, even when we don’t understand why something is happening.
It’s about resting in God, even when we want to run away from him. Only then will we begin to know the yoke that is easy and the burden that is light (see Matthew 11:30). I frequently reflect on these words of St. Augustine: “My soul is restless, Lord, until it rests in you.”
When I want to turn away from the Lord because I am hurting, when I am tempted to blame our Lord for a painful situation, I flip the temptation on its head, so to speak, by praying with King David,
“For God alone my soul waits in silence,
for my hope is from him.
He alone is my rock and my salvation,
my fortress; I shall not be shaken.
On God rests my deliverance and my honor;
my mighty rock, my refuge is in God” (Ps 62:5-7).
My flesh might be weak, but God has never wavered in his love for me!
Writing music has always drawn me closer to God. I find when I listen to music as I pray before the Blessed Sacrament in adoration, it is easier to lift up my soul in hope. And so, I pray that my song may be your companion in prayer and Eucharistic adoration, and that it will bring you closer to Jesus’ Heart, where you can finally be at rest in his love.
I am a wife, mother, songwriter, and cosmetologist. I grew up Catholic but fell away from the Church sometime after high school. After I got married and started having children, I suddenly realized I had a desire to be in a church family. I began to seek and ask questions about my faith. Through a series of God-given events, the baptisms of my children, and one "very large confession" later, I found my way back home. In and through that, I have responded to the call from the Lord to write music for him and stay ever so close to the one true Church he founded. You can listen to “My Soul Finds Rest” on music streaming platforms.
