Hide in thee

Longing for the garden Song Stories - Part 3

“How can beauty come from pain? Will tomorrow feel the same?”

“Hide in Thee" began to take form as I was preparing to lead a virtual Good Friday service in the early weeks of the Covid shutdown. “Rock of Ages,” one of my favorite hymns, was part of my setlist for that night, and the line “let me hide myself in thee” grabbed my attention. I’m not always the best at chasing down ideas, but this one stuck with me and I kept pulling on the thread to see where it would lead. As the beginnings of a new song based on that line rolled around in my head, I would hum the melody just like I do in the opening moments of the “Hide in Thee” recording. There was something comforting to me about the reputation of that phrase.

Side note: I’ve often been curious about the story we get a glimpse of in 1 Samuel 16, when David plays his harp for Saul. I won’t attempt to unpack this theologically, but I’ve always thought it was cool that a song helped sooth the tormented king. Good grief, music is such a gift.

Anyway, around the time I was prepping for Good Friday, my mother in law’s cancer was rapidly progressing. Simultaneously, any sense of control over the circumstances of our family’s life rapidly waned.

We were in Tennessee, and they were quarantined in KY.

This woman, a pillar of strength and resilience in her family and community, was becoming weaker, and she could not risk exposure to version of Covid that was taking the lives of so many during that time.

It was hard for Andrew and me to make sense of it all, much less explain it to our 7- and 3-year-old girls, whose little lives had been turned upside down by the pandemic and who loved their “Gram” so much. We desperately needed respite, some good news, a breakthrough, but it didn’t happen in the way we wanted. Gram went to heaven a few months later. We didn’t even get to have a real funeral because Kentucky “remained closed” much longer than Tennessee did. It was a dark and confusing time - for the whole world, and also for our home.

Psalm 126 holds a beautiful, mysterious promise for those who have known grief:

“Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy.”

“Hide in Thee” is not a joyful song (that comes later, with “I Will Give Praise”), but I tell the truth when I say that it became a place where I could bring my unedited self to the Father when nothing else could offer comfort.

P.S. If you’re an attentive listener, you will hear musical motifs weaving through the string quartet that are later echoed in “Tapestry,” the song that immediately follows “Hide in Thee.”