Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

I wrote this on February 15, 2009


I dont know how true it is... but I know that this business of pursing Christlikeness is so much of a two steps forward and one step back process. I was listening to music tonight while in the shower and the song I Fell Away came on by Brave Saint Saturn. I have always loved Brave Saint Saturn (and all of Reese Roper's stuff) because his lyrics have an unusual way of connecting with me.

I get so discouraged sometimes because I feel like a baby bird who is flapping his wings has hard as he can to lift of the ground, but as soon as I succeeding in getting some air between me and the ground, that progress turns into my enemy as I come crashing back down to the ground. Ugh. I just want to punt Screwtape and his law of undulation out my window.

Ups and down. Progress and failure. Growth and decay. Exhausted all the while. Thirsty.

But then I came to the bridge of the song. "You lift my battered soul, you mend my broken bones together." I love that.

But I was listening to the song just now in my bed as I am writing this and it occured to me that I should look up the lyrics and make sure they are right. I discovered something I never heard before in the 7 billion times I have heard this song.

Just before he sings that line of the bridge, he whispers one line behind the background music. "You lift my battered soul, you mend my broken wings together."

That is what I am singing as I go to sleep. Not that I fell away; not the beating on my soul; not my broken wings; not the pain that I see in people; not ugliness, or despair, or misfortune, or death; but that He lifts my battered soul and mends my broken wings each time I fall.

You lift my battered soul, you mend my broken wings together.
You lift my battered soul, you mend my broken wings together.
You lift my battered soul, you mend my broken wings together.
You lift my battered soul, you mend my broken wings together.