Milk & Honey

It’s here, friends. Milk & Honey. It’s a song for waiting times, for grieving times, for those who’ve lost the road or the words. This song at its core is about presence, about the power of just sitting with someone as they walk a season of loss, grief, or suffering. It’s about the One who stays with us during sleepless nights, sings over us, holding out hope and a lifeline in the quiet dark of night. Until the morning comes.

There are so many of your stories I think of when I listen to this song. And my own story, too. There was a season when the boys were very young where I was fighting anxiety so bad there were days I felt emotionally like a puddle on the floor. Even though on the outside my physical body was mostly fully functioning, I was getting my kids to school, cooking meals, getting work for our new business done, I was wasting away on the inside. Some days I felt like clawing my way out of my own skin, and though I never quite hit the cliff edge of truly wanting to end my life, there were nights I was certainly beginning to understand how a person could get there. Often I heard these words echo in my head and held onto them like a child clutching a security blanket – “a heap on the floor and you covered me with your wings.” I don’t know where they came from except, I guess, from the depths of my own soul, the only prayer I could offer at the time. Thankfully, like all dark nights, that season ended for me, and life eventually came back in fuller force and beauty than ever before. For the person still enduring in the moment though, the dark feels interminably long, and the best we can do is sit “with.” Be “with.”   

Sometimes you write a song and release it into the world and it takes wing and never really returns to you. This is not that kind of song. This song, for me, returns to my window sill unexpectedly and soothes my soul with each listen. So far anyway, ha. We all need some deep soul comfort after this past few years. Really hope Milk & Honey offers some small dose of that to you.

Thank you, Beth Whitney, for saying yes to entering this story space and writing this together. So glad we did. (And if you’re reading this and aren’t familiar with Beth’s music, go check her out. Incredibly haunting, honest, beautiful work. Both of us are found anywhere music is sold or streamed online.)

“The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save. He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you with his love. He will rejoice over you with singing.” Zephaniah 3:17

Artwork by the ineffable Katey Andrews. Find her work at www.kateyandrews.com.