In the Midst.

Please listen and then read:

...

I was given this album in the season my mom was dying.

I could not be more thankful.

...

I was driving home on a Friday evening, turning 25. 

I was leaving my parents' house for the last time. 

Because when I would come back it would only be my father's house.

My momma's 11 year battle with cancer was ending. 

My last day with my mother was miserable.

It is still something I cannot articulate well.

Those moments are twisted up in my heart like thorns, 

and I ask God to produce from my grief a kinder, better person -

Not a person steeped in bitterness. 

But some days it is a battle. 

I left that night quite certain:

I would not say goodbye to my mother before she left. 

...

As I drove, I swallowed the feeling you experience right before a tragic event. 

You know, the dread that gets caught in your throat. 

The kind Satan feeds you in a hard time - where for a moment you are choking.

 It comes from seeing someone in that kind of suffering - it turns the rhythm of your heart. Once you see it you can't follow a beat anymore. You're endlessly lost in a melody you don't have the oxygen to sing.

....

Yet, in the midst God gave me something to sing:

His praises.

For about half my life I've silently kept score in the match between cancer and us. At times I thought we were winning.

Other times we were so out of breath we could hardly breathe.

But when I heard this song I stopped keeping score.

...

"How does she still sing with the sting of prognosis?"

...

My mother in her sickness had sought the Lord.

She read His word, she prayed, and she sang. 

She was also depressed often and in severe physical pain. 

But she persisted in the midst. 

He didn't take the cancer, but she sang.

She was alive on her deathbed. 

....

Sorrows are on me like rain. They have been for the past three months. I imagine the same is probably true for you now or has been at some point in your life. From the bottom of my heart, I am so sorry. 

...

I pray God gives you a gift, like this song is to me. 

I love the juxtaposition within this song. 

How it's a song about loss and pain and how sometimes singing praise to the Father is a reaction of discipline. 

Yet, there are trumpets and a driving rhythm.

The melody is so joyful.

It's a bittersweet I've learned to appreciate. 

...

For the nights you cannot sleep.

For the times you wake up with swollen eyes. 

For the thoughts within that threaten to devour you.

For the constant state of avoiding true slumber.

For what you've had to live without.

For the lack of certainty that your loved one lives in eternity.

For not getting to say goodbye.

...

I cannot understand.

I ask questions with you.

But please do not stop looking.

Because in the midst is where He sits. 

.... 

"All night I couldn't sleep

Thinking about all the joy that I couldn't keep /

All these holes in my heart it just seems /

I've been pierced more times than I can speak /

Got another hole from a friend last week /

Lord Lord, why so many holes in me? /

Then I saw the hands that were holding me /

He said I know you, son I got holes too"