The following is a note from Chelsea Hamshaw on the release of her CD, “Pilgrim, Press On.”
I didn’t set out to write an album. It wasn’t on my mind as I walked through one of the hardest seasons of my life—Jason’s battle with stage 4 cancer. Yet in that crucible of fear and faith, songs began to take shape, almost unbidden. Several of these songs rose from prayers uttered in the dark at the piano bench and from truths gripped with trembling hands.
The liturgy served as a lifeline during this time, as it has in the varying seasons of life. Its steady rhythms gave me words when I had none: “You are worthy at all times to be praised by happy voices,” “Lift up your hearts unto the Lord,” “I am not worthy to gather up the crumbs under your table, but you are the same Lord whose character is always to have mercy.” The Scriptures and prayers I had known for years now pulsed with raw meaning. Paradoxes of hope and sorrow, life and death, strength through weakness, became the language of my days—and my songs.
Over the last few years, I had immersed myself in the study of the Psalms, which we know are prayed fully and perfectly in and through Christ. The raw cries of lament and exuberant declarations of praise are often intermingled, like every great story, like every song worth singing. On the second day of Jason’s two-week stay in the CCU at McLeod Hospital, his condition was precarious, and all we knew was that he had cancer. We had been praying, hoping, pleading that the diagnosis might reveal something manageable, something early. In hindsight, our hope betrayed our ignorance. Most people with early-stage cancer don’t end up in critical care, bleeding out because a tumor has invaded an artery. When the surgeon’s words finally came—“It is stage 4”—they landed like a blow to the gut.
I remember sitting alone as Jason was rushed off for more tests, crying out in bitter tears: “Lord, do You even hear me?!” In desperation, I turned to Midday Prayer in the Book of Common Prayer, grasping for some tether to hold me steady. The psalm appointed for that day was Psalm 116. As I began to read, the opening verse washed over me: “I love the Lord, because he heard the voice of my prayer, because he inclined his ear to me; therefore will I call upon him as long as I live.” What assurance in the midst of so much sorrow and fear. The Lord hears my cry and in the arms of His grace, my sorrow is held. Light pierced through the darkness through those ancient words, spoken anew to my needy soul.
Through this season, music broke through, and felt a bit like God’s glory shining in the shadowed places. These songs are not declarations of triumph or tidy answers to suffering. They are songs for the valley, holding lament and praise together, responding to the God who draws near to the brokenhearted, who lifts us from the miry ground, who has walked through the ashes of this life to lead us on to a better kingdom. These songs in this album aim to blend the language of the Psalms with the richness of hymnody, the rhythm of the liturgy with the rawness of my own experience.
Some of these songs were written months or years before Jason’s diagnosis, but came in the same unexpected way. Some songs, like “Rooted,” were reshaped through this time:
“In the cold and bitter season, in these harsh and pressing times,
when I cannot find a reason, hold me close within your vine.
When the pruning feels like dying, when my tears have left me dry,
in Your care I leave my longing. Rooted here, I find new life.”
I pray that these songs echo a hope that is unshakable—not in outcomes, but in God’s presence. The same God who meets us at the Table with bread and wine was with us in the darkness, transforming pain into grace.
If these songs resonate with others, I trust it is Lord’s work. I have no vain imaginations of glory in releasing this album, but do truly long for the church of Christ to have means by which we can praise in the midst of lament, and worship the Lord who tread through the mire for his broken, weary people. For worship is not something we manufacture; it’s something we are drawn into. Even in the hardest places, “it is right, and a good and joyful thing, always and everywhere, to give thanks.”
Even here, as trials rise higher than the hills, God is faithful. He will not leave us or forsake us. So, we do not lose heart.
Learn more about Chelsea Hamshaw’s music.