Tonight I came across a song called “Blessings” by Laura Story through some facebook posts. Alright, confession time–I don’t listen to a lot of Christian music… so when I read few posts regarding this song, it peeked my curiosity… and then one of the posts included part of the lyrics:
‘Cause what if your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You’re near
What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise
The lyrics immediately 
caught my attention. I’ve had lots of raindrops, tears, trials, and definitely what feels like thousand sleepless nights in my life! These are probably areas of my life that I don’t share too openly (except that a lot of my friends know that I’m a total insomniac!). Fortunately I have had enough experiences in life to see the beauty God has created out of the darkest of situations… so even as I go through difficulties, I try to keep focused on what God will do with it eventually… but truth be told, dark times just plain SUCK when you’re in the midst of it!
Being the nerd that I am, I wanted to know where these lyrics came from… and my search led to Laura Story’s bio on her website. You can read her whole bio here, but the following excerpt really spoke to me (btw, her husband, Martin, had been diagnosed with brain tumor 2 years into their marriage):
“Life is filled with things you don’t expect, but the Bible tells us to respond by trusting God and continuing to worship him,” Story begins. “Martin hasn’t received complete healing—and that can be hard at times when we view God as all-powerful and all-loving. But here we are now saying, ‘Yes, this is how faith works.’ God has proven to be faithful. We have been truly blessed out of a circumstance that at first didn’t seem like much of a blessing at all.”
This thing called faith… in the midst of times when we don’t receive what we want from this all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving God. Yes, God knows what we need, and He gives it to us in His time… but we’re often preoccupied with what we want! When I look back on my life, my biggest growth spurts as a Christian happened as a result of my darkest hours… but I never learn… I still want an easy, comfortable life… and this song was a good reminder that blessings often come through raindrops, healing comes through tears, and a thousand sleepless nights remind me that God is near–just like now!
gloria s. lee 