The Quiet After the Storm
The Quiet In The Storm was my next peaceful study music, never did I know I would write the soundtrack for the place of being in between sorrow and joy.
There is a particular kind of season that doesn't have a clean name for it—when sorrow and joy arrive at the same door, at the same hour, and neither one waits politely for the other to leave first. Today, I live in that season. Loss has sat at my table more than I would like, even as God has done something tender and unmistakable in bringing my daughter home to my heart and allowing me the humble honor of standing beside her at her wedding.
I didn't want to write around that tension. I wanted to bring the whole of it to the Father, the way the Psalms do—lament and praise poured from the same cup, because He is large enough to hold both without spilling either.
What came out was this prayer, written in the shape of Hebrew poetry: parallel lines, a rising complaint, a turn toward trust, and a closing that settles rather than resolves. If you are in a season like mine—holding grief in one hand and gladness in the other—I hope this gives you language for it.
Prayer From the In-Between
Father, I come to You with both hands open
one hand holds sorrow, and the other holds joy,
and I do not know which one to lift first before Your throne.
Hear me, O Lord, in the losses that surround me.
Grief has become a familiar visitor at my table;
it does not knock anymore, it simply sits down.
Sickness moves like a slow flood through houses that were once steady,
and I watch, and I pray, and I do not understand Your timing.
Strength is poured out like water through cracked hands,
and I feel the weight of watching what I cannot heal.
How long, O Lord? How long will sorrow sit at the table with the healthy?
How long will the body ache while the spirit still hopes?
Yet even as I ask, I remember—You have never once left the room.
And Lord, in the same breath as my lament, I must bring You thanksgiving,
for You have done a tender thing in my life this season
You have brought my daughter home to my heart.
I will stand beside her as she gives her vows,
and I will feel Your faithfulness thick in the air like incense,
for the God who gathers the scattered has gathered my own house.
So I bring You this offering, Father, unashamed of its mixture
grief and gladness poured from the same cup,
because You are large enough to hold both without spilling either.
You are the God of the sickbed and the God of the wedding feast.
You are the God who sits with the suffering and dances at the marriage supper.
You have not changed Your character to meet my circumstances
Your circumstances have simply revealed to me who You always were.
So I will not choose between lament and praise, Lord;
I will lay them both before You like Israel laid her sacrifices,
knowing that You receive the whole heart, not the tidy one.
Hold what is breaking in this season, Father.
Hold what is healing, slowly, in Your time.
Hold my daughter's new home in the shelter of Your covenant.
Still Yours in the sorrow.
Still Yours in the healing.
Still Yours in the joy.
I produced a substantial collection of ambient worship pieces that seem to prophetically sit inside this season, meant to sit with this prayer rather than explain it. If you'd like something quiet to hold space for your own in-between, you can listen HERE. You will also see it in an upcoming episode of The Quiet Table.
Wherever you are today, in the ache or in the answered prayer, or somewhere tangled between the two, may you know that He has not changed His character to meet your circumstances. He is still the God of the sickbed and the God of the wedding feast. And you are still His.
