With your breath (I will be still)

About a month before the RESOUNDWorship Worship Songwriting Retreat takes place, you receive an email from the leader who encourages you to write something new to bring along with you to share with your critique group. I think the encouragement is to arrive “with your latest, not your greatest”.

I had managed to do this the first time I went but life felt so busy and hectic in 2018 that I didn’t manage to get round to it. When I arrived at the retreat I had been allocated the best room in the place, wide open balcony, amazing views – everything was set for songwriting brilliance – but it never came!

I went there with a real sense that I needed to hang around in Psalm 46 for a bit – the sense of being still. I thought about all the stories in the Bible where through the power of God’s voice, touch, whisper, shout amazing things had happened – but how so often we can miss it because life is full of noise, busyness and chaos. I’d also arrived with a tune that I couldn’t find words to fit – and that felt like an added pressure that I needed to write some lyrics to that, and also find a tune that would build a song around being still.

The teaching and sharing in the first few days were amazing – and it felt like God was using the time to help me unwind and quieten myself. I had come from a really hectic and challenging time at work, and that couldn’t just be switched off.

I remember waking up on the Tuesday morning – the day of the concert where we all get chance to play one of our new songs to the rest of the retreaters – and I suddenly realised that the tune I had arrived with fitted with the words I had been thinking over. I headed down for breakfast in a really excited state, headed back up to my room and wrote a verse and chorus to take to a 1:1 critique and then straight into my group session. That afternoon saw an additional verse and bridge added – and when I shared again later that afternoon – my group encouraged me to lay back on the timing and allow the song to breathe. I played it that night, with one of the group joining me – and this song was born.

A really useful reminder to me, and hopefully to you, that the God that we serve is really, really powerful – and that power works through us if we find the place to quieten ourselves and let him speak.

Belongs to the album Though Seasons Will Change