Our choir at church recently did an SATB version of a song by Laura Story called “Blessings.” The words and ideas struck me, and, when I heard the solo version on the radio while doing some painting at our church, I took that as a sign that I should post a link to it here. Enjoy!
Here’s a condensed version of an interview with Laura Story in which she talks about how the song came to be written.
Laura Story had a highly successful career as a contemporary Christian singer. She would have described herself as blessed in the conventional sense of the word. In 2005, she married a handsome athlete and began working in music and women’s ministry at the 4,000-member Perimeter Church in Atlanta. Her 2008 national debut Great God Who Saves, won a Dove Award for Inspirational Album and earned Laura two consecutive nominations for Female Vocalist of the Year.
But a brain tumor hospitalized her husband in 2006. The faith Story sang about was put through the unexpected fires of fear and loneliness. Most young newlyweds don’t imagine being kept alive at one point by breathing machines or having to find their way through significant post-operative vision and memory loss. Could grace notes resound from such a life-altering struggle?
The answer, according to Laura, is a resounding “Yes!” She declares, “We have a voice that wasn’t there prior to this suffering. I can hardly begin to tell you of the hundreds of hurting people we’ve prayed with, people going through more than we have. This is a chance to share the Gospel.” The song “Blessings” came from her experience.
She says of it:
The song shows that we still have more questions than answers. But there’s a decision that I find God is asking us to make. Are we going to judge God based on our circumstances, or are we going to choose to interpret our circumstances based on what we hold to be true about God?
Our circumstances have magnified the blessing of marriage. As high school sweethearts, we faced the strong chance that our long-awaited marriage bond might last just two years. Once you’ve rallied through a life-threatening illness together, the rest of it is like a surprise; every day is a new gift that might not have been there. It’s not as big a deal now if he leaves his socks on the floor.
It hasn’t been easy. Everyone wants to be a mature and equipped follower, but would I have signed up had I known what it would take? God has grown us up, deepened our faith, our awareness of our great need for Him as a Savior, daily. We knew it before, but we didn’t see it.
Life is filled with things you don’t expect, but the Bible tells us to respond by trusting God and continuing to worship Him. Martin hasn’t received complete healing, and that can be hard when we view God as all-powerful and all-loving. But here we are now saying, “Yes, this is how faith works. God has proven to be faithful.”
We have been truly blessed out of a circumstance that at first didn’t seem like much of a blessing at all. God is love. He tells us so repeatedly in the Bible. Yet sometimes it doesn’t feel like He loves us. What if we pray for our loved ones to make it through, but they pass away before we even say goodbye? What if we pray for our children to grow up healthy but instead we watch them suffer a life-threatening illness? What if we pray for that little extra money to make ends meet, but we end up losing our home?
It’s devastating when we don’t see God’s answers to our prayers. “We cry in anger when we cannot feel You near.” What if the very thing that is best for us isn’t the same as what we’re praying for? All the while, God hears each spoken need. He loves us way too much to give us lesser things. God is watching over always, directing every moment we experience. So if He isn’t answering our prayers how we think He should, does that mean He isn’t answering? Or could it be something else? Could it possibly be that He’s really blessing us?
These are thoughtful, heartfelt words from a spiritually aware young woman. May the song that she has written and that we will sing help people struggling to find the blessings in their lives.
Preaching to the Choir 