Speak to Us

Rachel's new single, "Speak to Us" was released February of 2020. Written by Wendell Kimbrough, Jeremy Geddert, Karin Simmons, and Rachel Wilhelm in 2018, Rachel, Wendell, and Jeremy recorded the track later that winter. You can find it at all places that you listen to music. 

Songs of Lament

For as long as I can remember, I have been in love with minor keys. I came out of the womb enveloped in them. I imagine my soul connecting to each tendril, as I lose myself in melancholy.

I have always written my own songs, but when I finally recognized the beauty of God’s Word, I realized that some of those words found their pairing with the minor keys that so inflamed in my heart, seeking to be consoled. God’s Word showed me, in effect, that it was okay to be sad.

Initially, I didn’t even know that what I was doing was creating lament songs. When asked what kind of music I write, I would always say, “Sad stuff. If you heard it, you’d want to kill yourself.” Many of you who know me will likely nod their heads, remembering that exact response. I’ve spent a long time sitting with these songs, believing that there wasn’t a place for them.

As I’ve come to learn, lament expresses sorrow. It tells the truth about a circumstance no matter how wrong or unjust it is. My friend Davis Evans says, “Lament is the bedrock of faith. It is the cry for when the going gets tough. We need our hearts and minds shaped by the Man of Sorrows, the suffering King, the God who weeps with and for us, and the Spirit who intercedes and cries out for us. How can we not have a voice for distress, trials, suffering, and dark nights (days, months, years) of the soul? We need lament.” How right he is.

I would take this one step further and say that lament can bring about healing to parts of our soul that only the Healer of our soul can touch. King David knew this, as the man after God’s own heart. Think about that: God’s heart was pursued by David. And God gave us that evidence in David’s own psalms and laments. Remember, too, the prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Habakkuk. Isolated and alone, they revealed the Lord’s will and exposed suffering and injustice for subsequent generations to see.

Lament is being honest and vulnerable; it is opening oneself to healing, correction, and solace; and it is something that deserves a central place in our worship services. Not all of us have a present pressing burden, but I can guarantee you there are plenty of men and women in your church on a given Sunday who do. If we are to bear one another’s burdens, as Paul says, wouldn’t that include singing lament songs during worship in support of those who truly need to lament?

I have the opportunity to create a full-length lament album for the church—songs could be used for corporate worship or for private devotion. Most of the words are taken directly from Scripture, the words of the prophets Habakkuk, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and David. The church herself is responsible for this prompting. After a very intense Bible study on the book of Habakkuk, God poured out music to the Scripture that compelled me to memorize it—and to record it.

The album is available on Spotify, bandcamp, and other places you listen to music.

Have Mercy Now On Us

1. Have Mercy Now on Us

Written by: Rachel Wilhelm

Chorus:
Have mercy now on us (Have Mercy)
Have mercy now on us (Have mercy Lord) Have mercy now on us (Have Mercy)
Have mercy now on us (Have mercy Lord)

1. When we’re struggling to make ends meet When we’re stumbling on our feet
When we’re tired, when we’re weak
When we’re so thirsty, we cannot speak

Chorus

2. Break our hearts, our love renew We are blind here without You Tasting gall, tasting death
May we fear You with each breath

Chorus

I wrote this song in 2005 when I would sit and play guitar at night using my thumb as a pick so I wouldn't wake up my kids. When Andy Zipf and I worked on it in the studio, he said to me, "Rachel, this is a gospel song." We changed it up from the original and made it sound like a groovy cloud. 

Psalm 13

2. Psalm 13

Written and Arranged by Rachel Wilhelm & Andy Zipf

How long, O Lord will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul
And have sorrow in my heart all the day?

Chorus:
Oh, how long? Lord, how long? Hear us Lord, how long?
Oh, how long? Lord, how long? Answer us, how long?How long...

Consider me and answer me Lord my God. Light my eyes lest I sleep the sleep of death. Lest my enemies say, “I’ve prevailed over him.” Lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.

ChorusOutro: How long....

I originally put this song together for a Psalm contest. Little did I realize that there are many versions of Psalm 13, and the contest preferred more obscure Psalms. I had been thinking a lot about corporate lament, and wanted to create a chorus that was simple enough to where one could think about their troubles while singing. I practiced with the men at Lino Lakes Prison here in Minnesota for a worship night and it was pretty powerful. 

Out of the Depths

3. Out of the Depths

Written by Rachel Wilhelm

Out of the depths, of the depths, of the depths

Out of the depths, of the depths, of the depths I cry to You
I cry to You

I wait for You, wait for You, wait for You

I wait for You, wait for You, wait for You My soul does wait
My soul does wait

We are lost, we are lost, we are lost
In this wilderness, wilderness, wilderness Redeem us, redeem us, redeem us, redeem us

In 2010, right before two family deaths, I was going thorough a huge bout of depression. I had been hurt in various ways and I refused to go to church for about 6 months. My husband was incredibly supportive, and I remember how we used to take walks in the Wilderness Battlefield, side by side, in the sweltering Virginia heat. We talked and talked about how to get out of our situation. Things seemed hopeless. Those were the days I learned how to lament. This song came out from reading Psalm 130. The only words that could come out were in pieces, just like I was in pieces. 

My Heart Is Faint

4. My Heart Is Faint

from Jeremiah 9)
Written by Rachel Wilhelm

My heart is faint within meI’d weep the day and nightFor the cleansing of the sinner
For the cleansing of Your bride

Chorus:
I lift my hands
I lay down my life
Do not forsake us, O God O merciful God, I cry

My eyes a fountain of tears
O Comforter in sorrow
For the penance of the wicked For the healing of tomorrow

Chorus 2:
I lift my voice
I commit my life
Do not forsake us, O God O merciful God, I cry

I lift my voice
I lay down my life
Do not forsake us, O God O merciful God, I cry
O merciful God, I cry
O merciful God, I cry

O merciful God, I cry...

This song came about when I was 17 or 18 and reading Jeremiah. His pleas with God for the people of Israel were so honest and raw. It gripped me then as it still does now. Songs really do never finish. When Andy and I sat down to work on this one I told him I had jumped awake extra early that morning with the piano riff in my head. He said, "well that means we have to put it in there." 

Wayward Bride

5. Wayward Bride

(from Ezekiel 16)
Written by Rachel Wilhelm

Placed in your heart, the stone and the carved image

I gave all you want, but you turn, a soul imprisoned
I drew you from the open field,
Where you were cast and abhorred

My garment, from the cold, a shield, Your body, full, adorned

Chorus:
I will stretch out My hand

I will give to the fire
I will lay all bare
As you climb in the mire

How love-sick your heart, you built yourself a vaulted chamber

Your beauty mirrored death, to run to another saviorO twisted love, oh how you’ve strayedAffections, turned, a lofty place,

Wayward bride, this price the grave Oh how will it be paid?

Chorus:
When I will stretch out My hand I will give to the fire
I will lay all bare
As you climb in the mire

I’ll bring you back to Me, My vow sure, My love still true

And all will see your shame, but I will be atonement for you

If you read Ezekiel 16, the words are pretty stark and powerful. We forget it's in there. This is God's lament.

Lamentations 1

6. Lamentations 1

Written by Rachel Wilhelm; Piano composition by Tim Wilhelm

1. How lonely sits the city that once was full of people

How like a stricken widow she’s becomeHer splendor and beauty, unmatched among the nations

Her royal crown is twisted into chains

Chorus: She weeps, she weeps

2. Judah has wandered in exile and afflictionA sojourner in lands that aren’t her ownThey have overtaken her, hunted and abandoned

Trodden down like grapes pressed into wine

Chorus

3. She has seen the nations within her sanctuary

From on high the Lord has sent His fire
Mocking and jeering, the enemy has triumphed

“Look and see, O Lord!” she cries aloud

Chorus

Last fall (2016) I was in my office at my church and my son was down the hall in the choir room playing the piano. The piano hadn't been tuned for about 20 years. My son is petrified to play in front of anyone, although he is a very gifted player, so I was curious to hear what he was playing. He played this hauntingly heartbreaking lullaby of a song in 3/4. My heart about stopped. My goal in life was to write the saddest song in the world and my offspring had done it. At the end of the recording for Lamentations 1, his piano piece plays. It's called "Composition 05". I wanted to write a song for Lamentations 1 since I was in a Lamentations bible study, so I chorded out the piece Tim wrote and wrote a melody to lay on top of it. This is what came out.

HABAKKUK'S CALL

7. Habakkuk’s Call (Habakkuk 1:2 & 1:5)
Taken from ESV Bible; Written by Rachel Wilhelm & Andy Zipf

Call:
O Lord, how long shall I cry for help

And You will not hear?Or cry to You, “violence!”And You will not save?

Response:
Look among the nations and see

Wonder and be astounded
For I am doing a work in your days

That you would not believe if told

Amen....

With Habakkuk's Call, there begins a segment on the record where I break into the laments in Habakkuk. I was studying the book a couple of winters ago and it was suggested I memorize what our study leader called "Mini Habakkuk". She divided the whole book of Habakkuk into five sections which cover its main points. The best way for me to memorize is to write a song, so that's what I did with the texts. I crunched the first two together as a sort of call and response. Habakkuk calls and God responds. The Amen is something Andy added in the studio that I felt really rounded out the song...when we lament, and we hear from God, oftentimes it is not something we want to hear. We want a solution. But the only thing we can do is just agree. Resign. 

When writing this I was in a huge amount of depression and my first Minnesota winter. I sat with my daughter's baritone ukulele and picked out an almost Hebrew sounding melody. 

The Accusation

8. The Accusation

(Habakkuk 1:13)
Taken from ESV Bible; Written by Rachel Wilhelm

Words of Habakkuk:
You who are of purer eyes
Than to see evil and cannot look at wrong;

Why do You idly look at traitors
And remain silent when the wicked

Swallows up the man
More righteous
More righteous
More righteous
Than he?
More righteous
More righteous
More righteous
Than he?

This is the second installment of the Mini Habakkuk. I think of this, like Psalm 13, a fight song. 

The Woes

9. The Woes (Habakkuk 2:19-20)
Taken from ESV Bible; Written by Rachel Wilhelm

Words of the Lord:
Woe to him who saysTo a wooden thing, “Awake!” “Awake! Awake! Awake!”

To a silent stone,To a silent stone, “Arise!” Can this teach?
Can this teach?
Can this teach?

Behold, it is overlaid
With gold and silver
And there is no breath at all
In it
But the Lord is in His holy temple

Let all the earth
Keep silence
Before Him
Before Him
Before Him

Before Him...

Like Wayward Bride, this song is a lament of God. He is exasperated by idolatry. I love how He asks if a stone can teach knowing it's silent, and then demands silence because He is the One who speaks. There's something unearthly to me about the melody. I always thought of this one as the twin of Habakkuk's Call. 

Why Lament in Worship

Lament is expressing sorrow to God and asking hard questions in the face of trial. Some of our greatest Biblical heroes lamented—some openly, some in private. It is all over the Bible but is missing from the modern worship service. I suppose that, as churches have moved from a more traditional setting to contemporary, some parts of the service have gone by the wayside to create a more upbeat experience. Problems are for the rest of the week; Sunday is reserved for escape. Lament has an important place in worship, though, and we need bring it back. Here are a few reasons why.

 1. To bear one another’s burdens. Galatians 6:2 is clear: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” Everyone is bearing a burden of some sort, even if we don’t feel like we are in the moment. I can guarantee that there are plenty of brothers and sisters in our churches who are burdened and need to be comforted, sung forward, and held up to God in corporate worship. It’s part of loving our neighbor. Making a corporate petition to the Lord is one of the things that we should be doing in church for others, if not for ourselves.

 2. To be comforted. Who but the Lord is our Comforter? Job’s friends are pretty lousy ones (Job 16:1-2), and only when God Himself shows up does Job receive the vindication and comfort he desires. The Psalms are full of seeking comfort in lament (Psalms 3, 4, 10, 16, 17…). Part of bearing one another’s burdens is to comfort those who are afflicted. As the body of Christ, singing a song together, pleading for godly comfort in affliction, can give words to steer the afflicted in the right direction. And the saying is true, “misery loves company.” The feeling of not being alone in grief is an amazing builder of courage.

 3. To be vulnerable and experience intimacy with God. Some of us need a little help with directing our petitions in a healthy, honest way. Songs of lament can be the tool to open that door. When words fail to come to the mouth of the afflicted, scriptural lament can offer the words of God to be their words. What better model of lament do we have than Scripture itself? The truth of God’s word can bring us to a place of honesty with ourselves, as we see that it is OK to question, doubt, fear, express anger and sorrow—all on the Lord’s turf. We serve a God who delights in hearing us and, in turn, who speaks to us through His Word.

 4. To know the character of Jesus, the Man of Sorrows. As Isaiah 53:3 says, “He was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.” Jesus experienced everything we experience but perfectly. When we are given a chance to lament like he lamented and sorrowed, our hearts are shaped more into His image by the power of the Holy Spirit, to be able to identify with others in this broken world. The beauty of the personhood of Jesus is that He can identify with us. Modeling His life, in turn, is being acquainted with grief for the sake of others and our own sanctification.

 5. To be honest and confess our sins to God. Some of our reasons to lament are because of our own doing. David lamented and pleaded with God over his sin with Bathsheba. In Psalm 51, he urges the Lord to purge and clean him so he can rejoice again. Our own sinfulness can keep us from being honest with ourselves, God, and others. Lament in worship can give us a chance to reflect in a beautiful way and apply our hearts to a sung petition. Even David says in Psalm 32:3: “For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.”

 6. To heal. Lament can bring healing if we let God into those deep places. We are only truly free when we are being honest with ourselves, God, and our community. We have limits, and in humility we need the Lord to bind up our wounds and to ask Him for that healing. When we sing lament corporately, we create the space for everyone to allow God to do His miraculous work.

 7. To remember God’s goodness. When we reach a moment of helplessness and we turn to lament, we, like David, remember and remind the Lord of His promises and His goodness toward us. He will not go back on His promises and He will never cease to be good, so we helplessly cling to those truths to steady our hearts. Psalm 13:5-6 is a great example of a shift from complaint to trust: “But I have trusted in Your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in Your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, because He has dealt bountifully with me.”

 8. To recover joy. We cannot find joy without God (Ecclesiastes 2:23-26), for life on this earth is toil and hardship, and without Him it is meaningless. And Jesus rounds this out beautifully: “So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you” (John 16:22). Jesus says this before his crucifixion, to comfort the hearts of His disciples. In lament, true joy is found in knowing that Jesus has the victory over this fallen world and our sufferings are only for a time. For now, without true sorrow, joy cannot take its proper place. Without the depths of grief, the Resurrection feels less like a triumph.

 Lament has the power to shape us into God’s image. As the Body of Christ, in corporate worship, lament can provide an opportunity to be tightly knit in unity as Christ’s bride. Corporate lament can be an act of waiting patiently for the Lord in our sufferings: “…but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we are saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently” (Romans 8:19-26).

The Strength of Weeping in Weakness

had a host of symptoms and a number of circumstantial incidents, but I wondered, Should I really be this tired? I felt like I had the flu. 

I had just finished writing a set of lament songs from the Book of Habakkuk for my Bible study, and the thought of singing them was tiring me out. Singing was exhausting. Holding my arm up to play the guitar was exhausting. And then it all came to a head in a painful and fatigue-filled fibromyalgia diagnosis.

Down to Nothing

I stopped running and started napping instead. My husband was not only the bread-winner, he became the bread-maker. I felt useless, dependent, and fussed over. Nobody wanted me to do basic chores like washing the dishes. I found myself raising my voice at my family for helping me. Then it got worse.

I couldn’t get up without pain. I was limping for months on a hip that had really nothing wrong with it. I went from running 30 miles a week to being unable to walk a few feet without pain and fatigue. All the things I loved to do took more energy than I had.

So I had to figure out how to be still, to rest — and all this time I was taking laments from Scripture and putting tunes to them. And as I sang them, I felt them slowly dig down into me. I found myself, when faced with a challenge, singing them in my head.

Sometimes I would just sit down, practice being still, and play my songs to the Lord. I would take His own words and sing them back to Him in complaint, question, doubt, fear, and sorrow. I soaked in them even as I was giving up on ever being my old self.

He Gave and He Gave

As a singer/songwriter, I once had a dream of making an album, but I gave up on that too. Somehow the fatigue made me OK with it though. Plus, I just had this solid feeling inside that I was satisfied anyway. I kept praying through the years, “Lord, let me have it or take the desire away.” I’m still in awe — He let me have it.

I felt compelled to make an album of lament songs, but I had no idea how it would happen. I had several friends encourage me and even suggest it, but I would just shrug it off and laugh. Then I saw a super talented friend of mine who was producing music regularly. I mentioned the idea of a lament album and he talked me into taking it seriously.

“You are going to have to give me the energy, Lord,” I prayed.

And then I listened. I paced myself. My medicine was really helping a lot too. Praise God for that.

Strength in Weakness

Since making this album, I’ve never believed, with such conviction, the truth that when we are weakest, He is made strong (2 Corinthians 12:9). I made a thousand bars of soap to fundraise the album for Christmastime. When I saw it all piled in my living room I got scared: “Lord, I have open hands,” I prayed. “You urged me to make all this, and I did, and now You have to make it go.”

When I went to D.C. to record, in between takes I would lie down — and the last day I took a full nap while my producer worked on the instrumental pieces. God even provided a couch.

I have found that in my weakest and weariest moments, if I have the guts to admit it and ask for help, God will step in. I might be dragging, complaining, and lamenting the whole time, but what a good opportunity to direct those petitions to the one who holds the power.

It is this very process of engaging with God in our most vulnerable places where we can see Him do the work. This requires patience, and God provides that as well, through the Holy Spirit. God’s open hands provide it — we only have to take it.

You Watch Me

11. You Watch Me

Written by Rachel Wilhelm

1. You know my path and my lying down

You know all my ways, You watch me

Before a word was on my tongue
Before I was, You saw me

You saw me

Chorus:
Where can I go from Your presenceYou’re in the deep and in the airWhere can I flee from the Eyes that see me

Not adrift or asleep, but everywhere You’re everywhere

2. You saw my frame, unformed and frail

My inward part, You weaved me
Before I saw light, You knew my name

And all the days before me

Before me

Chorus

Psalm 139 always scared me and comforted me at the same time. It is also one of the most pro-life passages of Scripture in the Bible. And a passage that also shouts predestination and God's sovereignty. I wanted to capture the eerieness of the whole situation with the tune. I wrote this during the same time I wrote Out of the Depths.

I Will Take Joy

10. I Will Take Joy (Habakkuk 3:17-18)
Taken from ESV Bible; Written by Rachel Wilhelm

Though the fig tree should not blossom

Nor there be fruit on the vine
The produce of the olive fail
And the fields yield no food

The flock be cut off from the fold

And there be no herd in the stalls

Yet I will rejoice in the Lord I will take joy in the God,

The God of my salvation

For He is my strength

For He is my strength

For He is my strength

For He is my strength

I actually asked the ladies in my bible study to pray for me on this one. I knew I needed to write an installment that was not so somber. As I soaked myself up in the passage an old tune that came to me in a dream hundreds of years ago floated up and made itself comfortable. Pretty weird.