Brian And Jenn Johnson - Your Presence Lyrics

Video

I Love Your Presence - Jenn Johnson | Here Is Love

Meaning & Inspiration

I’m still shaking the dust off my coat from the road. Honestly, I shouldn't even be here. The smell of the pigs, the cheap gin, and the wreckage of three years spent running—it’s all still clinging to my skin, even if the water in the basin tried to scrub it away. You don't just walk away from that kind of filth and feel clean overnight.

When Jenn Johnson sings, "In the glory of your presence / I find rest for my soul," it’s hard for me to hear it as a soft, Sunday-morning melody. It hits different when your soul hasn't known a second of rest for a thousand miles. Most of my nights were spent pacing, sweating, wondering if the money would run out or if the law would catch up. Rest felt like a fairy tale.

But there’s this line in the middle of the song—it’s almost jarring, like someone shoved a chair across a quiet room: "If you want it come and get it for cryin out loud."

It feels aggressive. It feels like someone finally grabbing me by the shoulders and shaking me out of my own head. My head is where the ghosts live; it’s where I rehearse every mistake I made, every bridge I burned. To be told to let go of my head? That’s terrifying. My head is my defense mechanism. If I stop thinking about the consequences, what’s left? Just the truth. Just the fact that He’s standing there, waiting, and I’m the one still holding onto the trash of my old life because it’s the only thing I know how to carry.

"The love that I have given you was never a doubt." That’s the part that makes my stomach turn—not because it’s bad, but because it’s humiliating. To realize that while I was out there trying to prove I didn't need Him, the gift was already sitting on the table. It reminds me of the father in the story I grew up hearing, the one who didn't wait for the kid to get his life together before he started running down the road.

I’m sitting here, listening to this, and I’m not fixed. My hands are still rough. I’ve still got holes in my pockets. I don't have the "holy" look down yet, and maybe I never will. I don't know how to act in a place where people don't yell, but the tension of it—the idea that I’m allowed to just stop running and be held—it’s the only thing keeping me from bolting again.

I’m not sure I’m ready for the weight of it. Most days, the guilt feels safer than the grace. But if that presence is actually as real as they say, maybe I don't have to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. Maybe I can just be still for a minute, even if I’m still smelling like the gutter. He knows what I smell like anyway. He’s the one who pulled me out of it.