Several years ago I was introduced to the band City and Colour which consists of one band member, Dallas Green. His music tends to be mellow and raw and he has a way with words that caught my attention immediately and has had me following his music ever since. Not only are his lyrics fantastic, but he is also Canadian which is just plain awesome in my world. It is difficult to pick a favorite song, but some of his more popular songs include Comin’ Home, Little Hell, What Makes a Man, The Girl, and O’ Sister. While some bands have lost their unique sound as they produced more albums, City and Colour has maintained the down to earth sound that he originally intended to capture.

The song O’Sister caught my attention and I found myself listening to it over and over again. I was pretty unhappy with life at the time and the lyrics just spoke to me in a way that I cannot exactly describe. The song was written about Green’s sister who dealt with severe anxiety and possibly schizophrenia. While the things that I was dealing with weren’t as severe as the problems the lyrics elude to, I still felt like I could relate to it. I was dealing with some pretty serious depression at the time and very few people knew the extent of the depression that I was facing because I chose to hide it from those around me. The lyrics to O’Sister have long since stuck with me and influenced the name of this blog.

Part of the first verse of the song says, “Oh sister, what’s wrong with your mind? You used to be so strong and stable.” These lines stood out to me because I was not myself when I was dealing with depression. I chose to deal with it in ways that I shouldn’t have and over time lost a bit of myself. At first, I was good at hiding it. I would have really bad days, but the worse I felt, the happier I would appear to those around me. I never wanted people to know how badly I was hurting. Eventually, something snapped and I became terrible at hiding my feelings. I was no longer able to come across as, “strong and stable.”

My favorite lines of the song are, “But the blackness in your heart, Won’t last forever. I know it’s tearing you apart, But it’s a storm you can weather.” My blog found a name because of this song. I created a blog many years ago that was titled “A Storm You Can Weather”, but that blog was never shared with anyone. I chose to keep the name because I think that it is still applicable today. Back then, I felt a blackness in my heart. I felt dark, lost, and alone. I felt as if the darkness would never let up, but as the song says, it won’t last forever, and it didn’t. Eventually the dark clouds broke and it became apparent that it was just another storm. Life is full of storms and dark clouds are always looming in the distance, but I have found that with Christ in my life they are always storms that I can weather.

This blog was created to share my story and to attempt to reach out to those who just need to hear that it is going to be okay. The title, “A Storm You Can Weather” is a title intended to hold hope. When the dark clouds hover over head life can seem daunting, but there is always a way through the storm.

As written in my very first blog post:
“So here’s the thing…
No matter how dark the clouds,
How close the lightning,
How loud the thunder,
There is no storm too grand for God to walk you through,
There is no storm too violent for God to shelter you from,
Despite the rolls of thunder or strikes of lightning,
There is no storm you cannot weather with God by your side.”

And while you are at it, give City and Colour a listen…