“You’ve never failed and You won’t start now”

This is one of my favorite lines from Hillsong United’s beautiful song, “Oceans.”

One of my good friends introduced me to this song last week, challenging me to consider learning it and trying to make a cover if I liked it and found it “inspiring,” and since I have been on an overcoming fears and experimenting with singing and making simple videos with my iPhone kick lately (as part of my coping, grieving and recovery, I think), I thought why not give it a listen.

Needless to say, YES, I found it inspiring, and so so beautiful… and was brought back to a place of remembering when I used to love going to the ocean literally to connect with God.

During those years I struggled with depression, there would be many moments when life was just overwhelming, emotionally, mentally, physically…  When holding on as firmly as I could to a trust in God I had developed with Him to be continually faithful to His promises to lead me out of my depression became especially difficult, I often found myself looking for places that could bring me solace, hope, and strength.

Finding a quiet spot by the ocean where I could watch waves crash against the shore for hours never failed to bring me such solace, hope and strength, because the vastness of the ocean, and the awe-inspiring beauty and power of the ocean waves seemed to me a living testimony to, and an experience of soaking in, God’s grandness, greatness, power and peace….and His Big, Loving Presence with me.

Often it didn’t matter what was going on in life — my depression wasn’t ever really a consequence of immediate circumstances, but rather the result of years of built-up inner pain, fear and anxiety about what I could make of my life as long as that nagging inner pain was there, and an inability to really find and feel any “joy” in being alive to compensate for the turmoil, regardless of how much I willed myself “to try and just be happy.”

In my darkest moments, I would will myself to hang in there, because deep down (even deeper down than the inner pain) lay a firm belief that life was worth living, because that was what I had truly, sincerely come to agree with God to be the only logical conclusion at the end of the day.  Too much goes into creating a life, a person, for it to make sense that not existing would somehow ever be truly better than existing.

The ocean waves, forming and then crashing on the shore before disappearing, just to make room for new waves to come forth in the same manner… There is somehow a majesty and a purposefulness, even in the constancy of the waves’ transience. And so perhaps there is a similar–no, an even greater–majesty and purposefulness to each of our lives.

These days, when I can see the ocean, I remember what God can do — I reflect on the storms He has brought me through, especially the internal ones that were sometimes be the toughest battles to get through because the “enemies” were seemingly invisible, and declare that if He could do that, then really what is there that He cannot bring us through?

“You’ve never failed and You won’t start now”

Life is a journey of ever-increasing risk-taking and breakthroughs ever since I began walking with God, who loves me perfectly and leads me perfectly each step of the way, one step at a time…

Below is my simple cover offering of “Oceans,” as well as a song I wrote last week kinda along the same theme of looking to Jesus for refuge and strength in difficult times.

Jesus I Look To You (written and performed by Angela Lee)

Oceans (Where Feet May Fail) Hillsong United cover by Angela Lee
written by Matt Crocker, Joel Houston, Salomon Lighthelm

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And for your reference, in case you’d like to watch the official video and sing/play this song as well:

Hillsong UNITED Oceans (Where Feet May Fail) Lyric Video

Lyrics and Chords for “Oceans (Where Feet May Fail)” by Hillsong United