#22 is Runaway by Jess Ray, and no one is surprised because I just listened to Jess Ray A Lot this year apparently fkhfsdjk 😂

but actually, as well as being a really comforting song that I find often helps calm my anxiety and nighttime Loud BrainTM, it's also a very good blorbo song--I think the first time I ever heard it, I was pretty deep in my feels over The Wingfeather Saga, and I almost died at how much of a Janner-and-Tink song this was.

#45 is Leave What's Lost Behind by--drumroll please--Colony House!! because who else!! "are you listening? are you listening to me?/are you listening? are you listening?/you've been pushing at the wall just to see if it comes crashing down!!"

man I just. I just love the vibes of this one. tho tbh the main reason it's on here is probably because I like to listen to entire albums, especially for this band, and this one and When I Was Younger were the two I listened to over and over this year.

#68 is She Said by Jon Foreman, and uugghhfsghjhfgskdjhfdsjshdf i know exactly why this one is on here *cries* and that's because it's on my Thirteenth Doctor playlist and breaks my heart when I listen to it and think about her *cries some more*

actually I think Lu was the one to recommend this one to me for my Thirteen playlist, like a couple of years ago or something?? but it's also just a Good Song. even tho it's quite an angsty song as well. (I may also possibly have been listening to it so much this year because of The X-Files. I can't quite remember if I starting associating this one with Scully at a point, but it's very possible that I did and that's another part of why I played it so much.)

I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten

I first heard it out of context in a testimony video my church produced. A man who felt like he had wasted so much of his life apart from God tearfully quoted the verse with the conviction that it was true for him today. That somehow, someway, the years that he believed he wasted would be restored in some manner. This wasn't a literal picture of a longer life, but rather a metaphor for fuller years to come.

I would weep over this verse. In my depression, in my anguish, I would hold fast to the idea that the time I am losing will be restored with fullness by God. This hope that I clung to I think is best articulated by lyrics from Say You Will by Jess Ray

Will You return what was stolen?

Say You will

Say You will

Will You not come and revive us again?

Say You will

Say You will

Will we reap what we have sown in tears?

Say we will

Say we will

Will you restore the wasted years?

You will, say You will

I wanted my tears to mean something. I was desperate for it. I wanted my tears of obedience to grow as joy for the harvest, a bountiful yield I would one day reap. Even today, this part of the song is the easiest way to bring me to tears. Because I had so much unconsummated hope, because my pain was so acutely present, because I could feel myself losing days, weeks, months to depression.

I don't know when exactly I put Joel 2:25 in its full context, inside the story of Israel at the time of Joel -- this was a specific promise from God to his people. When I read Joel, I started to doubt whether or not this verse could really be applied to my life today. The truth is I needed the hope it offered too much to admit to myself that it wasn't a promise made to me. I told myself that since all scripture reveals God's never changing character, the fact that he would do this for his people then means he would do it for his people now. And maybe that's true. But now I think there probably were other factors at play and it certainly wasn't a promise made to me.

I saw a tiktok today that gave me language to represent how I feel now that hauntingly (at least for me) carries the verbiage of the above passages

The quote is from The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin

She put her head down in her arms and cried, and her cheeks were salt and wet.

She cried for the waste of her years in bondage to a useless evil.

She went in pain, because she was free.

What she had begun to learn was the weight of liberty.

Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake.

It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one.

The road goes upwards towards the light

But the laden traveler may never reach the end of it

Say to me that the years your locusts destroyed will be restored. Tell me now that I will reap joy from the tears I have sown.

This song has me so drunk on the Holy Ghost this morning tbh