I know the verse in Isaiah 61 speaks of replacing ashes and mourning with beauty and dancing. But we are not at the replacement part of life, yet. However, there are moments when beauty is shining through even in our ashes. I love the following verse, which speaks so clearly to our current season:

Though the fig tree should not blossom,
    nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
    and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
    and there be no herd in the stalls,
 yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
    I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
God, the Lord, is my strength;
    he makes my feet like the deer’s;
    he makes me tread on my high places.
-Habakkuk 3:17-19a

Habakkuk prophesied to the people of Judah during the final years before the Babylonian invasion. He was looking around at a world gone mad – and God was strangely silent. Habakkuk pleads with God to work upon the evildoers both within his own nation and the pagan nations surrounding them. We see this man of faith desperately seeking the face of God and wondering where the mighty working power of Yahweh was. Silence.

What do you do when silence is the answer you get even as you cry out for help?

I was driving home with only Georgia, Olivia, and Nathan. We were listening to Christian radio and sitting in relative quiet. A late snow softly fell and all four of us were lost in our own thoughts. The past week had a trauma-versery, and it left us all a bit exhausted. I wasn’t even paying attention to what songs were playing and imagine the same was true for my children. Each one was staring out their window with a heavy, distant expression. Then Lauren Daigle’s song, Trust in You began to play.

I softly began singing along with the music. I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, that Georgia was mouthing the words next to me. By the end of the first verse, Olivia and Nathan in the back were also quietly singing.

I didn’t want to do anything to break the magic of that moment. It was so sweet that my heart practically hurt. I carefully clicked the steering wheel volume control up a few notches and noticed that everyone grew louder.

I clicked it up a few more times. And then a few more.

By the time we reached the end of the second verse, all four of us were singing with our whole hearts. I was in tears and thanked God for the awareness to take in the beauty.

When you don’t move the mountains,
I’m needing you to move…
When you don’t part the waters,
I wish I could walk through…
When you don’t give the answers,
As I cry out to you…
I will trust, I will trust,
I will trust in you.
-Lauren Daigle