Take Courage, My Heart

Have you ever had one of those moments when you hear a song for the first time, and it hits you in a place do deep in your heart that instantly hot tears are rolling down your face and dripping off your chin and you’re a hot mess?

Just me? Great.

There’s a song by Bethel Music that turns me into a fountain of salty tears every time I hear it. The whole song is lovely, but the chorus in particular really resonates with me:

So take courage my heart
Stay steadfast my soul
He’s in the waiting

And hold on to your hope
As your triumph unfolds
He’s never failing

I think about waiting a lot. About the things in my life I have been waiting for. Everyone is waiting for something different; for me, it’s a relationship. I keep hoping that this will be the year that I meet someone, fall in love, find my person. But it hasn’t happened yet, so I’m waiting.

Sometimes waiting seems lonely and awful. It can feel tortuous and soul-crushing to watch everyone around you moving forward while you’re waiting.

And that’s why I love this chorus: it reminds me that waiting isn’t something that I do alone. God is in the waiting.

Admittedly, I don’t often think about God being in the waiting place with me. Waiting feels like I’m a little kid, sent to sit on a kitchen stool alone for a time-out, counting down the minutes until the adult comes back into the room and tells me my time is up. It feels like a punishment I have to suffer through by myself.

But if I am courageous and steadfast, the song says, I’ll find God in the waiting. If I really examine the waiting place I’ll find that God is there, that He has always been there, that He will always be there. Because where I am, He is. Waiting isn’t a time where I am forced away from His presence and blessing; I’m not banished to another room. I can still meet with God there.

And yet I still have hope that, one day, my waiting will be over. That God has something good planned for me and that He won’t fail to bring it to fruition, whatever it might be.

The RELEVANT Podcast interviewed singer and songwriter Kristene DiMarco about her inspiration for this song. She said, as she was working through the lyrics with her co-writers, that she realized “we’re all looking for more courage to hang on to our hope.”

I love this idea that hope takes work. It’s not a magical feeling, it’s a thing we strive for. A thing that takes courage. Hope is one of those concepts, like love, that feels simple on the surface, but is actually a vast and tough and complicated thing that we may never fully understand.

Keep holding on to your hope. Keep looking for God in the waiting. Be courageous. I know you can.

And, in the meantime, join me in crying through this worship song 💜