The ten-year journey behind "Glory"
The Making of Glory - Part 1
This is the first post in a series about our upcoming single: Glory. In this post, I want to tell something of the story behind the song. Prepare for the overshare.
Some songs take a long time to emerge.
Like popcorn, there might be a hint of something—a sensation, a feeling—but only after waiting patiently does it suddenly pop into the world.
Glory was one of those songs. The events took place a decade ago, but it took much of that time to process and eventually formulate a song. Here are the lyrics below—skip to the bottom to listen to the song in full (this version is from our very first studio jam).
Glory New life, promises Can we get back to the plan Where you knit them Fearful, and wonderful Now blink, ten years gone Since I left you at the hospital, alone No one answered The night alarm Crying over broken eggs Maybe we can try again someday It is well, It is well it is well with me Is it written in the book? No answers, can I trust? You are with me You are with me Glory
Glory is, first and foremost, a song about pain. Specifically, a miscarriage.
To set the scene, it’s 2016. Lucy and I have been married for seven years, and trying for a baby for a couple. A smiley face on a stick finally gave us the news we had been hoping for: she was pregnant.
When you get pregnant, the advice is often to wait until the 12-week scan before telling friends and family. I believe this is to reduce the additional pain and awkardness of having to tell more people in the eventuality of a complication, but I also believe this advice is misplaced, as you’ll see.
We only knew Lucy was pregnant for a week or two before we knew there was a problem: she was bleeding. We made a very late night trip to the A&E in Salisbury. We were eventually seen by a young, unsympathetic (or possibly just awkward) doctor-boy who told us to go home. “You’re having a miscarriage,” he told us unceremoniously.
The news of miscarriage is a crushing thing. So much emotion is tied into a pregnancy, and with a miscarriage, expectant joy lurches into grief. We hadn’t even had the opportunity to process being pregnant before it was taken away, and many of our friends and family didn’t know, having obeyed the “12-week rule”.
At the time, Lucy and I were running a media business together. We were booked to do a video shoot in North London the next day, and, to my lasting regret, I considered maintaining the client relationship more important than staying at home with Lucy. I travelled eighty miles very early in the morning with our good friend Alexandra, while Lucy stayed at home.
Early in the day, Lucy called me from the hospital. She had checked herself back in, having self-diagnosed as having an ectopic pregnancy1. It took the hospital almost a whole day to confirm her suspicions.
I continued with the shoot, nervously awaiting her next call, when she would hopefully have some test results. She did eventually call with the news that they were rushing her into surgery in the next couple of hours. I packed up the kit and raced down the M3 to Salisbury, cursing the 50mph average speed cameras the whole way. I was trying to get to the hospital to see her before she went in.
(Narrator: he didn’t.)
When I arrived, Lucy was in theatre and I could do nothing but wait for her to be wheeled out. After a couple of hours she came out, in an office chair2. She seemed okay, possibly because she had finally been allowed to eat something3. After a short while I had to leave her overnight in the hospital, so I headed home, shellshocked but thankful I still had my wife.
So far I’ve only outlined my own experience of the day — partly to spare you unnecessarily grim details and also to respect Lucy’s privacy. I will say that after becoming certain that she was having an ectopic pregnancy, she had to wait a very long time before this was confirmed. She couldn’t eat or drink anything, and even though she had friends come to visit her (including a couple of hospital docs we knew), she was feeling quite alone and growing increasingly anxious. She knew rather too much about the dangers of ectopic pregnancies from her research.
Sometimes, ignorance really is bliss.
It’s ten years since that night, but recalling it is still painful. We’ve not been able to have children since — a further op in 2018 confirmed that Lucy’s remaining tube is damaged and unlikely to function.
This is all getting a bit heavy, so time for a little levity…
If you use Apple Photos, you might know the feature where you can look at a map and the photos you have taken appear over the location they were taken. After one operation, Lucy took some snaps of the operation photos of her phone. After this, every time we looked at Apple Photos, we were greeted with an unforgettable vision of Lucy’s internal organs. 💀
The past ten years have not been easy for us, but there is one thing that has stood firm through this journey together: our faith.
It’s often levelled at Christians that their faith is just a crutch for weak people to make it through life. I can accept this — but rather than seeing it as a weakness, I kind of see it as the point. Most of us (perhaps all) need the crutch, and even in the midst of darkness and pain, we found that God was there with us.
This is what the song is about: questioning, honestly, in the midst of pain. But also, an acknowledgment that we are not alone, and that we have hope. That’s what Christianity is about after all.
We don’t know if we will ever have our own children (at our age, the chances are getting slimmer) but we do know that our story is one of faithfulness through heartbreak.
But sometimes, it’s easier to put it into song:
BTW, this is just a demo we recorded during our first ever band jam. The track is currently in production for release as a single, and we’ll release a couple more posts about the music writing and recording process before releasing it direct to Substack.
Thanks for reading and listening, it means a lot.
Graham and For What Joy
You have turned for me my mourning into dancing;
you have loosed my sackcloth
and clothed me with gladness,
that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent.
O LORD my God, I will give thanks to you forever!— Psalm 30:11-12
PS. You may be thinking that this post was just a massive overshare. And you might be right… maybe that’s why artists normally write songs not blog posts!
We do both want to thank all of our friends and family who have walked with us through this journey. ❤️
Ectopic pregnancies are very serious - the fertilised egg gets stuck in the tube and doesn’t make it to the womb. It then starts to grow, eventually rupturing the tube. Without swift treatment they are likely to be fatal.
Salisbury Hospital at the time had no available wheelchairs… potentially as a result of NHS budget cuts!
One of the trials was that she had to wait 24 hours without food or water (nil-by-mouth) until the operation.