jordanpfowler

By Jordan P. Fowler

I wrote “Nothing Is Wasted” while battling some things that seem as though they might remain a long-term “thorn in my flesh.” I don’t know yet what that will look like. There are things I hope will change, things I am still praying through, and questions I cannot answer.

During that time, friends lost their 14-year-old son to brain cancer. He had beaten it as a toddler. This was their second battle with it.

There is no easy sentence to put after that.

Their loss is theirs to tell. I would not presume to explain it, speak for their faith, or turn their son’s life into a lesson. But their loss, alongside what I was facing, was part of the context in which this song was written.

There were—and are—a lot of hard questions.

Measuring God’s Love by Our Circumstances

The Song begins:

I have measured your affection
By the ease beneath my feet.
Call the level road a blessing.
Call the broken road defeat.

Those lines describe a way of thinking that can quietly shape our faith. When life goes well, we feel reassured that God loves us. When the ground gives way, we wonder where He went.

We may know that suffering is part of life and still find ourselves asking why this suffering, why this person, why again.

I don’t have an explanation for a family having to face their child’s cancer twice, or for losing him at fourteen. I don’t want to offer one. “Nothing Is Wasted” was written with those questions still open.

It asks whether God’s love can be deeper than the circumstances we use to measure it, and whether we can trust Him when we cannot make sense of what has happened.

When We Don’t Know Whether Relief Is Coming

The possibility of a long-term thorn raises its own questions. What if the thing I am asking God to remove stays? What does faithfulness look like then? How do I keep praying for relief while also learning to live with the uncertainty?

I use “thorn in my flesh” to describe that possibility, not to claim that I know why these difficulties are here or how long they will last. And definitely not to claim I was on a level with Paul….ha!

The uncertainty is part of what makes them hard.

The second verse says:

I have taken every silence
As a sign you turn away.
I have called the dark abandonment
Before I learned to wait.

Waiting does not give us control over the outcome. It does not tell us when relief will come. But the song questions the conclusion that silence must mean abandonment.

Can I bring that feeling of absence to God without deciding that the feeling tells the whole story? Can I keep turning toward Him while still admitting how difficult it is?

“I Don’t Have to Call It Good”

The bridge gives the clearest words to what I was trying to express:

I don’t have to call it good.
I don’t have to understand.
I can bring you all my questions
And still, still place them in your hands.

I don’t have to call cancer good. I don’t have to call other life circumstances good. Believing in God’s goodness does not require me to speak as though these things are less terrible than they are.

And I don’t have to pretend that I understand.

There is room in prayer for grief, confusion, disappointment, and questions that return after we thought we had settled them. We can ask for healing. We can ask why. We can say that we are tired.

Placing those questions in God’s hands does not make them disappear. Sometimes it simply means bringing them to Him again, with no new words and no greater clarity than yesterday.

That is the kind of trust this song reaches for.

What I Mean by “Nothing Is Wasted”

I know the title could sound too easy beside the circumstances that surrounded its writing. I would never want it to become something we say to hurry someone through grief, or that if you muster up enough faith you won’t face pain or strain.

It is not a claim that every loss will eventually make sense to us. Nor is it a promise that we will look back and be glad for everything that happened.

It is a hope I am trying to hold: that suffering does not place us beyond God’s love, and that He has not left us in the middle of it.

The final chorus says:

Nothing is wasted.
Nothing is lost.
You have been with me
Through all it has cost.

“Through all it has cost” matters. The cost is still there. Faith does not erase it.

The song closes by returning to the image of the road beneath our feet. It begins with measuring God’s affection by how easy that road is. It ends with learning that love may be deeper than the road itself.

Learning is the word. I am still in that process.

Why I’m Sharing the Song

I make music because I hope it helps and encourages people. I am long done with touring as a worship leader or having any desire to be on a platform. I want life much simpler now. With this song, I hope that encouragement includes permission to be honest.

If you are grieving, facing something that may not go away, or carrying questions you find difficult to say aloud, you do not have to arrive at a tidy conclusion before you can turn toward God.

You can bring what is actually there.

That is what I was trying to do in writing “Nothing Is Wasted.” Perhaps it can give you a few words for doing the same.