Owl City + Britt Nicole - You're Not Alone Lyrics

Video

Owl City - You’re Not Alone (Lyric Video) ft. Britt Nicole

Meaning & Inspiration

There’s a line in this track by Owl City and Britt Nicole that catches me off guard every time: "But You reach out for my hand / And You lift me up / Again and again."

That "again and again" part? It’s not just a catchy hook. It feels like a punch to the gut.

I’ve spent a lot of time living like the guy who walked away from the house with his pockets full of inheritance, only to find out that pig slop doesn’t pay the rent. By the time I turned around to head back, I wasn’t looking for a hug. I was looking for a bunk in the barn and a meal. I figured I had burned through all my chances. I’m still wearing the dirt from the road, and sometimes I think I can still smell the smoke of the places I shouldn't have been. I keep waiting for the door to be slammed shut.

But the verse says He lifts me up again and again. That implies a cycle of my own failure. It implies that I’m going to trip over my own feet tomorrow, just like I did yesterday. In Luke 15, the father doesn't wait for the kid to get his act together or scrub the barnyard filth off his skin before he starts running. He sees him while he’s still a long way off. He doesn't hold a town hall meeting to debate whether or not I’ve "learned my lesson" well enough. He just acts.

That's the scandal of it. If it were up to me, I’d have cut me off a dozen times over.

There’s this tension in the song—the honesty that "some days I just can't go on" and "I stumble and fall." It’s not the typical, sanitized stuff you hear that pretends everything is sunshine once you start praying. It’s gritty. It admits that the falling happens. And yet, the promise isn't that I'll magically stop falling; the promise is that I’m not doing it in a vacuum. I’m not doing it by myself.

When I hear them sing "You're not alone," it doesn't sound like a slogan on a bumper sticker. It sounds like someone pulling me out of the ditch when I’m too tired to even ask for help. It reminds me of the Psalm where He says He’s close to the brokenhearted. He doesn't hang out in the clean, high-and-mighty places; He hangs out in the mess.

I’m still trying to get used to the idea that I’m wanted. I don't know why He bothers with me, honestly. I don't have a tidy explanation for why the rescue keeps happening when I’m the one who keeps wandering off. But when I’m sitting there, feeling the weight of all the stupid choices I’ve made, that "again and again" is the only thing that keeps me from walking back out the door. It’s a grace that’s frankly annoying in its persistence. And I’m starting to realize that’s the only kind that actually saves a guy like me.