The Woman Who Wrote Eight Thousand Songs in the Dark

Fanny Crosby lost her sight at six weeks old when a country doctor applied a mustard poultice to her inflamed eyes. By the time another physician could examine her, the damage was permanent. She would never see a sunrise, a page of sheet music, or the face of anyone she loved.

She could have spent her life grieving what was taken. Instead, she spent it writing. Over the course of ninety-four years, Fanny Crosby composed more than eight thousand hymns — among them Blessed Assurance, To God Be the Glory, and Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior. She often wrote entire verses in her mind before dictating them, holding six or seven stanzas in memory at once. When asked if she wished her sight had been spared, she replied that blindness was a gift, because the first face she would ever see would be the face of her Savior.

That is perseverance refined to something luminous. Not grim endurance. Not clenched teeth. A steady, lifelong decision to create beauty from what others would call ruin.

The Apostle Paul understood this alchemy: "We do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day." The Most High does not always remove the hardship. Sometimes He does something more breathtaking — He writes music through it.

Whatever darkness you are walking through this morning, keep singing. The song is not finished yet.