(Cover art courtesy of Thomas Nelson)

Breaking Through

Taken from I Still Believe by Jeremy Camp. Copyright © 2019 by Jeremy Camp. Used by permission of Thomas Nelson. www.thomasnelson.com

“Lord, I want this!” I said at one point. “I’m falling and stumbling and getting bitter and angry, but I’m fighting through to get this!”

I felt as though the Lord was responding, “I know that you’re calling out to Me, and I’m telling you that I am breaking your fall. I’m thinking about you more than the sands of the sea.”

On the third and final morning, I left the cabin disappointed my expectations hadn’t been met. It certainly hadn’t been a relaxing getaway in the mountains. I hadn’t eaten much, and I hadn’t slept much. I felt like I had been on the losing end of a long boxing match.

“Lord,” I prayed, “my heart’s desire was to have a huge revelation, weeping in Your presence, feeling Your healing touch— something momentous. I don’t understand why nothing has changed.” After eating at a restaurant near the cabin, I started down the mountain and toward home. The demo CD I’d recorded was in the car, and I slipped it into the player to hear how it sounded. As “Walk by Faith” played and I listened to the words God had given me on our honeymoon, the eagle landed on the perch.

Warmth penetrated my heart, melting the ice that had built up. All the pent- up emotions suddenly released. The floodgates to my eyes burst open. I came to a stop sign at an intersection and pulled over to the side of the road and buried my head in my hands.

As moving an experience writing “Walk by Faith” had been and as many times I had sung the song and meditated on the words, I had never fully grasped exactly what the song was saying until that moment on the side of the mountain road.

“Okay, Lord,” I said aloud in the driver’s seat. “I can’t see, but I will walk by faith. I don’t understand, but I know there’s a greater plan. It will be okay— You will make it okay!”

I had been broken before, so I knew how it felt. And I knew I had just been broken again. What a relief! I remember being so thankful.

“I’m sorry, Lord, for being so upset,” I said. “I get it now.”

I had experienced several monumental moments in my life, when God had broken me down or spoken to me in a powerful way: the summer youth camp, in the chapel at Bible college, when I wrote “I Still Believe,” my time with Jon Courson. That brief time beside a mountain highway was another of those moments. As I look back now, I recognize that time was the ultimate turning point in my processing what had happened to Melissa. I still encountered battles— and still do— but starting immediately at that point, everything changed.

I pulled back onto the highway and resumed my drive home. I continued talking to the Lord as I drove down the mountain, but the conversation had a drastically different tone— or at least the tone on my end of the conversation had changed.

Everything around me just seemed so peaceful. I had hope again. I could see the mountains around me again, and they were beautiful.

That was probably the quickest two- hour drive I’ve ever made in my life. I returned home a different man. The steps of healing that followed grew closer and closer together than they had been. Hope and expectancy characterized my prayer life. “Here I am, God— let’s do this!” I would pray. “It’s time to live. I’m broken, but whatever You want me to do, I’m willing.”

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