We sit together, you and I,
And watch as all the world slips by,
And as we do,
I open up my heart to you.
I try to pour out all the weight
Of my restless, frustrated state,
When you step in, start to unfold
A plan to solve all I have told.
At first I try to stop you
I hadn’t finished yet
But then I realize
If I break you off, you will forget…
So I’ll wait for you to speak.
I want to hear your words.
I want to see through them
To your mind and your heart.
It’s true that I had more to say,
But it would chase your thoughts away.
To hear your words, I’ll choose to stay
In silence ‘til they come.
Oh, Lord, I come to You again
Set dizzy by this world’s daily spin
And stumbling with the shifting weights
Of my own heart.
I try to bring it all to You,
Sort myself out, ask what to do,
But soon I find I’m all I hear.
Your still, small voice seems nowhere near…
But that’s when I remember
How love once held me still
When words I longed to hear
Needed silence they could come and fill…
So I’ll wait for You to speak.
I want to hear Your words.
I want to see through them
To Your mind and Your heart.
I always have so much to say,
But it can draw my thoughts away.
To hear Your voice, I’ll choose to stay
In silence ‘til it comes.
Yes, I’ll wait for You to speak.
I want to hear Your words.
I want to see through them
To Your mind and Your heart.
At the end of all that I could say.
It’s You I need most, anyway.
To hear Your voice, I’ll choose to stay
In silence ‘til it comes.
Notes:
One of my husband’s and my favorite pastimes together is to go out driving in the countryside. We love taking in the scenery, and we’ve found that somehow it’s one of the best places for us to really focus on one another and talk. The inspiration for this song took place on one of these drives sometime in the summer of 2018. I was sharing something, and my husband cut in to reply. I’ll admit, at first I was annoyed. However, one thing I’ve learned in our years of marriage is that while I can hold a train of thought in the back of my mind through quite a number of winding side-tracks, my husband almost invariably forgets what he’d been about to say if he gets derailed. He also speaks much more rarely than I do. And I realized in the moment before breaking back in again that while what I’d been saying would keep, I didn’t want to lose what he had to say. I valued it and him enough to wait. Unlike in the song (creative license 😉 ), the further application followed a few minutes later (while I was waiting for him to finish putting his thoughts in order): if I can value what my husband has to say enough to put my own words on hold, should I not value God’s voice enough to stop and listen for it? This is not to say there’s never a place for being the one to talk, either to others or to God. But sometimes being still and listening can be harder, and choosing to wait and hear can be a way of valuing the one you’re listening to and what they have to say.
I wrote the first verse and chorus of this song not long after that drive in 2018, but while I knew where I wanted the rest of the song to go, I was having a harder time formulating it. The song ended up on hold, and as can happen with me, the hold ended up being a long one. Then at the end of March, I found myself convicted with the sense that I had been kind of drifting along in a lot of ways and leaving some of the gifts God has given me neglected. In the resulting reflection, I decided I needed to pick up some of the creative works I have “lying around” unfinished, actually complete them, and then share them so they’re available for God to use if He wants in building up and encouraging others. Finishing this song was the first step in that endeavor.