You Don't Know Me

Track fourteen is a reply, and it is the only direct one on the album. For years certain men have called me a compromiser, a tolerant, a traitor to the truth. You don't know me is what I have wanted to say back, and the song is careful about how it says it - because the easy thing would be a counter-attack, and that is exactly what it refuses to be.

Listen to what the verses actually answer with. Not arguments. You never sat beside my bed when I was weeping for a man. You never heard the prayers I said when I could hardly stand. You never watched me love the ones you said I cast away. The reply to being misjudged is not to misjudge back. It is simply to say: you drew a line, you drew it fast, you never asked - and a verdict reached without ever knowing the man is a verdict about the judge, not the accused.

And then the song does the thing I most needed it to do. It does not land on the critics at all. It lands on Christ. But He knows. He has always known every chapter I have written, every silent prayer and groan. That is where a wounded man has to put his weight. The name you called me by was never the name I was given. The final word is not bitterness and it is not vindication on my terms - it is rest. You don't know me, and you don't have to. But He does. And that is enough.