This Is My Story

Fanny Crosby lost her sight at six weeks old when a mustard poultice, applied by a man posing as a doctor, destroyed her eyes. She could have spent her life defined by that loss. The world certainly tried to define her that way — the blind girl, the unfortunate child, the one who would never see.

But Fanny Crosby refused to let blindness become her identity. At the age of eight, she wrote her first poem: "Oh, what a happy soul am I, although I cannot see. I am resolved that in this world, contented I will be."

Over the next nine decades, she wrote more than eight thousand hymns. And in 1873, she penned the one line that captures everything she understood about who she really was: "This is my story, this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long."

That single phrase from Blessed Assurance is one of the most powerful identity statements in Christian music. Not "this is my disability." Not "this is my tragedy." This is my story — heir of salvation, purchased by God, born of His Spirit.

The world will try to name you by your worst moment, your greatest limitation, your deepest wound. But the God who formed you in the womb has already spoken your true name. You are His. You are known. You are claimed.

Fanny Crosby could not see a single face in any congregation where her hymns were sung. But she saw something far more clearly than most of us ever will — she saw whose she was. And that was enough to sing about for a lifetime.