I’ll Lift You Up (When You Are Down)

May 27, 2015

Some songs are written about the good days. This one was written about the other kind — the days when faith is all you have left, and even that feels like it’s slipping through your fingers.

It’s a song about being caught in the storm of uncertainty and doubt. Not a passing shower — the kind of storm where you can’t see the shoreline anymore, and you’re not sure which way is home.

And it leans on an old, familiar image — the Footprints poem. The idea that when you look back and see only one set of footprints in the sand, it’s not because you were abandoned. It’s because, at those precise moments, you were being carried. That’s the whole song, right there: when we can’t walk anymore, God lifts us up.

The song went on to find its own footing on Christian radio. It debuted on Billboard’s Christian Airplay chart the week of November 5, 2016 — and that debut week was its peak, too, at No. 41, with six weeks on the chart in total.

— Franklin

behind the music · franklin mckay