Shadowed by Mercy came out of a season where life felt unstable from every direction.

Pressure. Loss. Anxiety. Exhaustion. Responsibility piling faster than answers. From the outside, life still looked functional. I was moving. Working. Showing up. Carrying responsibilities the way I always had. But internally, something felt different. The weight had become harder to explain. Thoughts ran constantly. Sleep came in pieces. Pressure sat in my chest before the day even started.

 

At the time, I would not have described any of it as spiritual. I didn’t have language for that yet. What I did have was survival.

 

The strange part is, the roots of this song started long before the storm ever came.

Growing up, faith existed around me, but not fully inside my home. Every Sunday, my siblings and I climbed into a small church van while my mother stood on the porch and watched us leave. Church mattered enough for us to attend, but somehow not enough for her to walk through the doors herself.

 

As a child, I did not understand that contradiction. I only knew routine.

 

Sunday school.

Bible verses.

Pews.

Stories I didn’t fully understand.

 

At the time, church felt more like structure than relationship. Predictable. Safe. Almost like school, but something stayed. One verse quietly followed me long after I stopped paying attention to faith:

 

Romans 5:1.

 

                                 “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our                                          Lord Jesus Christ.”

 

What I didn’t realize then was that seeds do not stop existing simply because they disappear beneath the surface. Life moved on. Like a lot of people, I drifted.

Teenage years became distraction. Success became identity. Achievement became proof of worth. I chased progress, responsibility, relationships, goals, and everything that looked like becoming somebody.

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Faith faded into the background.

Or at least… I thought it did.

 

When I look back honestly, there were moments that never quite make sense.

Decisions I somehow stepped away from. Roads I easily could have taken but didn’t.

Moments where something inside me paused, resisted, redirected, or quietly whispered caution when logic alone could not explain why. At the time, I called it instinct.

Now… I think maybe mercy sounds quieter than we expect.

 

The song eventually gave words to something I had felt most of my life but never understood:

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                                  “I felt a presence in the shadows…”

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Not loud.

Not forceful.

Not demanding.

Just near.

 

Like someone standing beside me long before I recognized they were there.

  

Then life reached a point where survival stopped working. Everything felt like it was unraveling at once. Losses stacked on top of pressure. Responsibilities multiplied. Anxiety got louder. Internally, it felt like I was carrying far more than I could explain. That was around the time people started showing up differently.

 

Church invitations.

Conversations about faith.

Encouragement arriving from unexpected places.

 

And one woman who kept asking me the same simple question:

                                 “Can I pray for you?”

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At first, I always said no. Not because I was angry. Because prayer felt vulnerable.

Too vulnerable. Strength, at least the version I had learned growing up, meant carrying things quietly. Handling them yourself. Solving problems. Enduring pressure without asking for help.

 

So I kept saying no. Until the day I couldn’t anymore.

 

Not because I suddenly understood faith.

Not because I had answers.

Mostly because I was tired.

And when she asked again…

I finally said yes.

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That moment changed something I still struggle to fully explain. Her prayer started quietly, but somewhere in the middle of it, my walls stopped holding. Emotion I had controlled for most of my life surfaced faster than I could stop it. Tears came. My chest tightened. My breathing changed, and somewhere in the middle of it all, she said something that still echoes in me:

 

                         “Jesus walks beside you. You don’t have to carry this alone.”

 

Then something happened I still do not fully understand.

 

Peace.

Not the absence of struggle.

Not answers.

Not resolution.

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Peace.

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The storm did not disappear.

The pressure remained.

Nothing externally had changed.

But internally, something loosened.

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The noise quieted.

The weight shifted.

​

For the first time in a long time, I stopped feeling like I was carrying everything by myself.

And in the stillness, one verse surfaced immediately:

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Romans 5:1.

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                       “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God                          through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

 

Peace.

 

Not because life suddenly made sense, because somehow, even inside chaos, I no longer felt abandoned by it. That realization became Shadowed by Mercy.

Because the deeper truth was this:

 

Mercy was never the absence of pain.

Mercy was the thing quietly keeping me from falling further than I could survive.

 

It was there when faith felt distant.

There when life drifted.

There in bad decisions avoided.

There in moments I felt unseen.

There while I was building, running, striving, failing, grieving, surviving, and trying to outrun things I did not yet understand.

 

The song says:

 

                                  “Jesus, Jesus… guarding every step I take…”

 

And if I am honest, that line feels more true now than when I first wrote it, because looking backward changes perspective. At the time, I thought I was surviving alone. Now, I see something different.

 

Not rescue from every storm.

Not protection from every consequence.

 

But presence.

Steady.

Patient.

Quiet enough to overlook.

Faithful enough to stay.

 

Shadowed by Mercy became the first song because, in many ways, it became the beginning of understanding my own story.

 

Not that God removed the storm.

 

But that mercy had been standing beside me inside of it the whole time.