Lydia Laird: Finding Worship in the Wounds
From the moment Lydia Laird sat down with me for our CCM Magazine conversation, I knew this wasn’t going to be a surface-level interview. I’ve always admired her vulnerability, the way she doesn’t just write about the sunny days but invites listeners into the dark valleys and shows them how to look for light.
“You’ve always been bold about addressing anxiety and depression in your music,” I told her, “but you also manage to hold space for joy and healing. How do you keep creating from that place?”
She didn’t hesitate.
“I don’t know that there’s like a black and white answer to that. I think on this side of heaven, we’re always on a journey of sanctification, and it’s very human to want to just be like, well, here’s the answer. It’s fixed. Like, okay, I struggle with anxiety, but look at God. And yes, God can heal and God can completely deliver you from things. But we see in Scripture many times, like even with Paul, we know he had a thorn in the side. People debate on what that is, and he talks about it, and yet he continues living for Christ. I think there is a tension in being human, which is both and, it’s holding the hope of eternity in one hand while also holding the brokenness of being human in the other.”
That tension is all over her album The Heavy, The Healing, The Holding, which Lydia says God had placed on her heart even before she knew the full weight of the season ahead.
“I originally had the concept like a month before I found out my dad had cancer. I thought I was coming out the other side of a very difficult season. I had been in a very toxic and heartbreaking kind of relationship for a long time, and I had just finally really taken a step of obedience and ended it. I kind of felt like, okay, I’ve been in this heavy, I’ve been in the midst of some of the most difficult depression of my life, and I’ve seen God healing through this obedient step. And now I’m coming out the other side. And then the next month, we got that call about Dad, and it was like, whoa, no, I’m back to the heavy.”
Her voice caught when she described those months.
“Daddy’s memorial service was Friday and I was in the studio Monday starting the project, and I knew that’s what Dad would want. I had told him, ‘Daddy, this record’s for you. Everything’s different now. I want you to know that this isn’t just carrying on your legacy, God’s going to use it in so many people’s lives.’ Sometimes we think we understand what God’s doing or why He’s given us a vision, but it’s His vision, and He’s doing something that far surpasses anything we could think or imagine. And often that looks like walking through a lot of grief before you get to the holding.”
One of the most moving tracks on the record is See You in a Minute, written with her brother during those final days.
“We were all sitting around my dad’s bed and my brother said, ‘Daddy, you always say heaven time is different. So we’ll just see you in a minute.’ Knowing this is not forever, that’s been a really powerful thing for people. I’ve gotten so many stories from listeners who’ve lost someone, and they’ve said, ‘That song gave me hope I didn’t know I needed.’”
As we talked, I shared my own story of losing my mom more than a decade ago, and how grief has a way of surprising you years later, how a song or a scent can take you right back to day one. Lydia nodded.
“Grief is forever. It just takes different forms. And like you said, we don’t sit in that heaviness. There is hope. Each one of these songs, I hope, is pointing someone to Jesus, the only way they’re going to make it through this valley.”
Even now, in a new season of marriage and motherhood, Lydia’s creative well still draws from that same place of worship in the midst of pain.
“Before we got pregnant with our daughter, Lucy, my husband suddenly lost his father. So it was my dad, his dad, and then all of a sudden, here comes Lucy. God is so faithful that He even gave us this precious little girl in this random season of life. Her name means light, and truly God gave us light. I promise you, no matter how dark the darkness is, He will bring light.”
But healing isn’t a straight line, something Lydia is quick to be honest about.
“I have still struggled. I think the record got done and a lot of people thought, okay, she ended with The Holding, like she’s in this healthy place now. And man, every day is an up and down. In the last month or so, I’ve really struggled, postpartum anxiety, grief, all the change. My oldest sister came over, sat down with me, and said, ‘Lydia, your mind’s so full of you. You have to fill it with worship.’ And it seems so simple, but it’s everything. When we shift our eyes from these issues we’re facing to God, it truly is everything.”
She smiled as she remembered what happened next.
“I like tried worship music and I start singing and it’s like, oh, hello, I forgot how powerful it is. It’s strange, you know, you start worshiping, and everything is better. Worship is everything to me right now.”
That’s the heartbeat of her songwriting, not to hand out tidy answers but to point people to the One who sits with us in the mess.
“I hope people know how close Jesus is. I’ve struggled so much hearing the enemy’s voice tell me everything wrong with me, why would Jesus have anything to do with me? I need to be cleaned up and perfect before I go before the throne. But that’s the opposite of who He is. He is the closest to us in our brokenness, in our mess. If one of my songs meets a person in their messiest, most shameful state and lets them hear, ‘But He does love you’ — that’s the legacy I want to leave.”
She told me about a moment with her dad that shaped that conviction.
“I moved to Nashville, started making a whole bunch of stupid mistakes, and I thought, if Dad knew, if God knew, nobody would love me. I drove home to East Texas and told my dad everything. He just looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, ‘Sweetheart, if you could see the skeletons in everybody’s closet, you’d be amazed. And Jesus sees them, and He loves you.’ It gave me freedom. In that moment, Dad was Jesus to me.”
Before we wrapped, I asked what she’d tell her younger self the day she first moved to Nashville.
“Oh, it’s all going to be okay. I remember literally thinking, ‘This is what I’m supposed to do,’ and then Dad dropped me off and I collapsed on the floor, sobbing. I wish I could just be like, you’re good, just keep going.”
In the end, that’s Lydia’s message to all of us, keep going, keep worshiping, keep writing the truth even when it comes from the deepest pain. Because sometimes, the heaviest moments hold the seeds of the songs that will carry someone else through their own storm.
