There are dreams that feel reasonable when they first enter our hearts. Then life happens. Years pass, doors close, circumstances change, and the thing we once believed might happen begins to feel increasingly unlikely. Eventually, even saying it out loud can make us laugh. Not because it is funny, but because it feels impossible.

 

That is where "She Laughed" begins. Sarah had been carrying a promise for years. God had promised Abraham that his descendants would become a great nation, yet Abraham and Sarah continued growing older without the child through whom that promise was supposed to continue. By the time we reach Genesis 18, Sarah was far beyond the age when she expected to become a mother. Then three visitors arrived. As Sarah listened from the entrance of the tent, she heard that within a year she would have a son. And she laughed.

 

I love that Scripture leaves that moment in the story. Sarah did not respond with perfect confidence. She did not immediately declare that she had always known everything would work out. After years of waiting and watching time move against her, the promise sounded almost absurd. So she laughed.

 

I think most of us have had some version of that laugh. It is the laugh that comes when somebody tells you that your life could become something you cannot possibly imagine from where you are standing.

 

Me?

That?

After all this time?

Do you know where I came from?

Do you know how many doors have already closed?

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Sometimes our dreams become so distant that believing in them starts to feel foolish.

I understand that feeling. Growing up, there were plenty of reasons to believe my life would remain very small. I do not need to retell every part of that story because so much of my music already carries pieces of it, but there was a time when many of the things I have eventually done would have sounded ridiculous to me.

 

Getting out.

Going to college.

Earning a doctorate.

Writing books.

Building businesses.

Creating music.

Writing songs about Scripture and faith.

 

There are pieces of my life today that the younger version of me probably would not have believed if somebody had described them to him.

 

He might have laughed.

 

Maybe that is why Sarah’s story connects with me differently now. The dream itself can change along the way. Mine certainly did. Things I once thought would define success no longer mean what they used to mean to me. But beneath all those changing dreams was something more important. I was discovering what I was capable of. I was discovering that where I began did not have to determine where I ended.

 

That is what I wanted the laughter in this song to do.

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The first chorus is disbelief:

 

 

            She laughed… “It can’t be true”
            Years gone by, Heaven never came through

 

That laugh comes from exhaustion. Sarah had heard the promise before, but she had also watched year after year pass without seeing it fulfilled. Faith can become difficult when time starts arguing against what you believed. Eventually you stop asking, When? and start asking, Was I foolish for believing this at all?

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That is where God responds with the question at the heart of the song: “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” The question turns Sarah’s attention away from what she believes is possible and toward what God is capable of doing.

 

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The second chorus carries something the first one did not: possibility.

 

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                She laughed as the light shined through
                Heaven spoke… it wasn’t through

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Nothing was in her arms yet, but suddenly the impossible did not feel quite as impossible. I think there are moments like that in our own lives. The door has not completely opened, but it moves.

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Someone calls.

An opportunity appears.

A relationship begins healing.

An idea starts taking shape.

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You finally accomplish something you once believed was beyond you. Suddenly that old dream you were almost embarrassed to believe in starts breathing again.

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You laugh again, but this time it sounds different.

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Genesis eventually gives us one of my favorite transformations in Sarah’s story. Isaac was born, and Sarah laughed again. But now she says, “God has brought me laughter.” The same woman who laughed because the promise seemed impossible eventually laughed because she was holding the promise in her arms.

 

That became the entire architecture of the song: she laughed because it could not happen, then she laughed because maybe it could, and finally she laughed because it did.

I think that reaches far beyond Sarah. Sometimes we look back at where we started and almost laugh at the distance between who we thought we would become and who we actually became. Sometimes the miracle is not even receiving exactly what we originally asked for. Sometimes it is discovering that our life became larger in ways we could never have predicted.

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I have experienced enough of that now that I am much more careful about saying something is impossible.

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I have watched my dreams change.

I have watched my priorities change.

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I have had things fall apart that I desperately wanted to hold together, and I have also found myself doing things I never dreamed I would be doing.

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That may be the most personal part of She Laughed for me. I keep going.

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I do not always know what the next chapter is going to look like, and I do not believe every dream automatically becomes a promise from God. Faith is not a guarantee that everything we want will eventually appear if we simply wait long enough. Sarah’s story is deeper than that. It reminds me not to decide the ending while I am still standing in the middle.

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There are things happening in our lives that we cannot see yet. There are abilities we have not discovered, roads we have not taken, dreams that will change, and prayers that may be answered differently than we expected. Sometimes something we once considered impossible suddenly becomes the life we are standing in.

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That is why I love the final chorus:

 

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                   She laughed… The promise came true
                   After all these years, Heaven finally came through
                   There in her arms, she held the proof…

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Sometimes the thing that once made us laugh because it seemed impossible becomes the very thing that makes us laugh because we cannot believe how far we have come.

Sometimes faith is simply refusing to write “The End” while God is still writing the story.