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Stay
stay here
close by my side
you always hear when I cry
calm every fear
and you understand the pain that won’t leave me
you feel it, too
take me
all that I am
I’d give you more if I could
all of my life
you always will be the one I can turn to
the one I can talk to
Lord, how I long for the day
when I can
touch
you
Reviews
Lovely, Doug, and the perfect time to release it. —Suzanne P.
Beautiful, Doug! —Diane S.
A beautiful song, Doug! Same piano you used for “Jimmy and Me?” Love the piano and orchestrations….Keep the songs coming! Loved this one… —Jeff C.
A perfect song for a time such as this. Our souls long for that day. —John K.
Oh, Doug…this just pushed me back into Holy Week…feels like a prayer that Jesus himself could be singing to his Father in the garden. —Katie C.
This is sooo beautiful, Doug! I needed to hear this and pray this today…
✨❤️✨ —Bobbie S. C.
We listened to this many times in the middle of the night last night. We will listen to it many more times. Beautiful! —Jonathan M.
Quintessential Doug….❤️❤️❤️❤️ …of or relating to the most perfect embodiment of something —Ron B-G.
Doug, this is great. My Mom used to play “Willie” when I was probably 5. I always remembered the title and asked recently who that Willie song was by. She pointed me in your direction. The bridge in that tune always amazed me as a kid and even now I’m recent times as I’ve rediscovered it. This song has a bit of the “Willie” vibe. Great stuff —Billy H.
—Dina L.
Well friend…this is a paean to all that is exquisite. Your [voice] has all the expressiveness that it has earned over the years. Simply lovely Doug…simply lovely. —David B.
2020 Notes
I’ve been working on an uptempo song for awhile now, and it’s almost finished, but the time just doesn’t seem right for that one since the pandemic hit. So a few days ago, I put it aside and started working on a different song, called “Stay.” Given our stay-at-home orders these days, guess it’s no surprise that a song with that name should come to mind.
It was written just three months before “Jesus Never Fails,” and in a way, it’s really the same song written in a different grammatical person. “Stay” is a prayer, written in second person. JNF is more like a declaration, I suppose, and it’s written in third person. But put the two side by side, and you pretty much hear the same message, just from different points of view.
A couple weeks ago, David preached on the twenty-third Psalm, and pointed out to us all how the person changes in that song, too. You start in third person. “The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures…,” right up through the first part of verse 4: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” But then, all of a sudden, right in the middle, the voice changes without any warning, and you have this very personal section: “for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me…” Why do I fear no evil? Because thou art with me.
The valley of the shadow of death sounds all too real to us these days. Though it looks different to each of us, it’s always dark and scary—and lonely. But if we keep our eyes on the Shepherd, we don’t need to fear. He is with us. Suffering with us. Walking with us.
I wrote “Stay” in a very troubled period of my life. It’s just been sitting in my songbook all these years, gathering dust. That is, until it came back to me in the middle of one night last week when I was having trouble sleeping. I kept going over it in my head, recalling the melody, imagining how I could arrange it, remembering the lyrics and adjusting a word or two… But mostly, thanking God for staying with me and walking with me through that very dark, shadowy time. And the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like the song had come back to me for a reason. So I switched focus, got to work on “Stay,” and here it is. Think of it as the second-person, frontside bookend to “Jesus Never Fails.”
I don’t ever recall performing this song in concert, but I remember well the first (and possibly only) time I played it for someone. I played it for a dear friend of mine, “Hoppy,” so nicknamed by his folks because he used to hop around in his crib, I think he told us. He had been stricken with polio as a child, and had recovered, but still bore some of its marks. He was a good musician, and I always remember him having a very childlike, innocent, BIG faith. A writer himself, he played bass in a couple different Christian music groups, including New Jerusalem, the one I belonged to in Ann Arbor during college years.
A little less than a year after I left the group, I came back to Ann Arbor and visited him in his family home. (He was always inviting everyone over.) He asked me if I had anything new I could play for him, and I sat down at his piano and played him this. He absolutely loved it—he always did like my weird chords and melodies—but he seemed particularly taken with this one. I’ve never forgotten that moment. Hoppy went to be with his Lord several years ago now.
Hoppy, or more properly, Thomas Stricker Colvin III, I hope you’re listening, ‘cause this one’s for you. You were a great friend, and a great example to me, always encouraging me to keep my eyes on my Good Shepherd.
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