They Sang My Song Back to Me
Jamie MacDonald on finding her why in a women’s prison
What if the very thing you walked away from is exactly what God uses to bring you back?
After years of not singing, Jamie MacDonald was invited to sing in a women’s prison. “The first day that I got there,” she says, “I was coming down the hall, and there was a sound of many voices—a choir singing one of my songs.”
“Immediately hope filled my heart, and I knew I was right where I was supposed to be,” she says. “By the time I got in the room, I could see all their faces, and they were just singing my song right back to me. I broke into tears… it was the most hope I’ve ever felt in a music setting.”
Brokenhearted and Disillusioned
“I had tried the industry thing,” she says, “and I kind of walked away brokenhearted and just kind of disillusioned.” “But that was one of the first times for me that music made sense,” she says. “It all felt like it was from God again—and not just some other useless endeavor.”
“These women really carried me through one of my darkest seasons,” she says, “as my dad was kind of facing his final years.” “I haven’t met Christians with as much hope as these women had in the prison,” she says.
“To see the way music has been carrying them really just kind of lit a fire in my heart,” she continues. “I was like, okay—I have my why now.” “So from then I just really keep them in mind, everything I’m writing,” she shares. “Every time I have to do something that feels bigger than me, I’m like, ‘Hey, I’m doing this for them.’”
A Passion to Reach the Prisons
“It’s cool because a lot of people are still relating,” she says, “prisoners or non-prisoners.”
Scripture says it plainly: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God” (2 Corinthians 1:3-4 NIV).
“I really feel like God has given me a heart and a passion to reach all the prisons,” Jamie says. “That’s happening now.”
Maybe you’ve walked away from something that once felt too painful to touch again. Let Jamie’s story inspire you to believe God can meet you in the very place you thought you’d lost—and that the people you show up for might be the ones who end up carrying you home.
Want to go deeper?
A Life That Speaks: Serving Others with the Story You Live—a free 5-day devotional on YouVersion—walks you through five scripture images (a lamp, salt, a mustard seed, an alabaster jar, a harvest field) to help you see that the ordinary, faithful things you give are seeds God is already tending toward a harvest.
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