Skillet - Rebirthing Lyrics

Video

Rebirthing

Meaning & Inspiration

I’ve spent a lot of evenings sitting on my porch, watching the light die behind the treeline, listening to the silence that only comes after the house has gone quiet for decades. You keep a few things in your head during those hours—old hymn verses, the smell of damp earth, and the ache in your joints that reminds you of everything you’ve survived.

When I first heard Skillet’s "Sick of It"—or in this case, "Sick of It" leading into these sounds of "Rebirthing"—I wondered if it was just noise. It’s loud. It’s frantic. It’s got that edge that makes an old man want to turn his hearing aid down just a notch. But then, the lyrics hit: "The worst is the waiting / In this womb I’m suffocating."

That line stopped me.

Most people in the church talk about waiting like it’s a polite Sunday afternoon activity, something you do with a cup of coffee and a smile. But I know better. I remember waiting for the doctor to walk through a door, or waiting for a prodigal to call, or just waiting for God to show up when the room felt empty and the air was getting thin. That’s not a polite wait. That’s a suffocation. It’s the kind of waiting that feels like you’re trapped in a cocoon that’s turned into a tomb.

The Scriptures have a way of echoing that panic. Think of the psalmist crying out, "How long, O Lord?" (Psalm 13:1). He wasn’t asking out of curiosity; he was gasping for air. We like to pretend we have it all together, but there are nights when the faith feels like a heavy coat you can’t quite button.

The song talks about "filling up my lungs with oxygen" when His presence moves in. It’s a violent, desperate image. It isn’t subtle. In my younger years, I probably would have brushed this off as dramatic. Now, I see the mercy in it. If you’ve ever been truly empty—I mean the kind of empty where you’ve stopped believing your own prayers—you don't want a soft breeze. You want an infusion. You want the kind of breath that Ezekiel saw coming into those dry bones in the valley (Ezekiel 37). You want to be rattled back into existence.

I’m not entirely sure I can get behind the "Right now" refrain. It feels too simple, doesn't it? Like you can just command the light to break. Life usually drags its feet. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe it’s not a command, but a plea. When you’re at the end of your rope, you don’t have the energy for complex theology. You just have the breath you’re trying to catch.

I still don’t know if I’d play this on a Sunday morning, but in the dark? When the doubt feels like it might win? There’s something honest about admitting you’re suffocating. It’s the first step to breathing again.