This song came from an experience I had while teaching early morning seminary, and then something that happened later that day while I was alone in my garage.
We were studying Isaiah 53 and Alma 7, talking about Jesus Christ and what it really means that He bore our griefs and carried our sorrows. I've read those scriptures many times throughout my life, but something about them struck me differently that morning.
We talked about how sometimes, when we're going through something difficult, we just want to find somebody who understands. Somebody who's been through what we're going through. Somebody who can tell us they know how it feels.
But there's something interesting about human nature. Sometimes the very people we turn to, the ones who have experienced something similar, end up telling us about their own experiences instead. They tell us how hard they had it, what they went through, and how they overcame it. Sometimes they even make us feel like what we're experiencing shouldn't be that difficult.
I don't think most people mean to do that. I've probably done it myself more times than I realize. We naturally relate things back to our own experiences. And sometimes, in trying to help someone feel understood, we end up making the conversation about ourselves.
That was what made our discussion about Jesus Christ so meaningful to me.
Isaiah describes Him as "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." He says that Christ has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. And then Alma 7 teaches something that I think is one of the most beautiful truths in all of scripture.
It says that He would go forth suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind. That He would take upon Himself the pains and sicknesses of His people, so that He would know, according to the flesh, how to succor them.
We talked about that word, succor. It means to come to someone's aid, with the old Latin roots carrying the idea of running to help.
And I love that.
Christ chose to experience the very things that hurt us, so that He could know perfectly how to come to our aid.
Think about that for a moment.
He knew what He was going to experience. He knew the suffering that was ahead of Him. And He willingly took it upon Himself. Every pain, every anguish, every kind of sorrow that we could possibly experience in mortality.
He chose to know.
I think there's something so profound about that. When I go to Him with something that's weighing on me, I don't have to explain why it's hard. I don't have to convince Him that my circumstances are difficult enough to justify how I'm feeling. He already knows. He has felt it Himself.
And He knows how to help me through it.
At the end of our seminary lesson, I felt prompted to have the students sit quietly and listen to a song. I asked them to think about something in their own lives that they felt nobody really understood. Something they might be carrying that other people couldn't see.
And then I wanted them to think about Jesus Christ. About what we had just read. About the fact that He had already experienced whatever it was they were thinking about.
I felt the Spirit strongly during those few minutes. I bore my testimony to the students, and we finished our lesson.
Later that day, I was home in my garage, putting away some of my kids' workout weights. We work out together on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and I was just walking around cleaning things up.
And out of nowhere, I felt this very distinct desire to kneel down and pray.
There wasn't anything particularly wrong. I wasn't in the middle of some terrible experience. I didn't have some great burden I needed lifted at that moment.
I just wanted to thank Heavenly Father for Jesus Christ.
So I knelt down right there on the garage floor.
And I prayed.
I thanked my Father in Heaven for His Son. For what He had willingly done for me. For the times in my life when I've felt His love, when I've needed His help, and when I've experienced the healing that comes through His Atonement.
I thought about how much it means to me that He knows. That He actually understands the things I've experienced, including the things I've never been able to explain very well to anybody else.
And I felt such gratitude for Him.
That experience stayed with me, and I began thinking about how I could put it into a song.
I wanted the song to begin with something I think almost everybody has experienced. That feeling of searching for someone who understands what you're going through, and sometimes walking away from those conversations feeling just as alone as when you started.
Then I wanted the music to change as the singer turns to Christ.
I wanted that chorus to feel like the relief that comes when you finally realize you are understood. When you recognize that the Savior knows exactly what you're carrying, and that He chose to bear those things because He loves you.
That's where the words came from:
O Savior, Thou hast known… The grief I bear alone. And all I could not say… Thou felt along the way. I wanted the song to sound almost like an old hymn, with the language of scripture and the reverence that comes from singing something you believe with your whole heart.
And I especially wanted the prayer in the second verse to reflect what actually happened that day.
I kneel upon the floor this day, With little I can find to say. No plea for sorrow to depart, Just thanks arising from my heart. Those lines mean a lot to me because that's really what it was. I wasn't asking for anything. I simply felt the need to kneel and give thanks.
As I worked through the song, I kept coming back to the Savior's willingness. Alma teaches that He took these things upon Himself so He could know how to succor His people. Isaiah tells us what He bore. And the account of Gethsemane reminds us that He knew what lay ahead and still submitted Himself to the Father's will.
That's what led to the bridge:
Thou knewest what the cup would hold, The grief of young, the pain of old. And knowing all that Thou wouldst bear, Thou wentest still, and met me there. I think that last line may be one of my favorites in the entire song.
Because that's what I've come to know about Jesus Christ in my own life. He has met me there. In places I never expected to find myself. In circumstances I didn't know how to get through. In moments when I couldn't find the right words to explain what I was feeling.
He has been there.
I know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. I know that His Atonement is real, and that what He did reaches so much further into our lives than I think we sometimes recognize. He suffered for our sins, and He also experienced our grief, our sickness, our disappointments, and the things that leave us feeling alone.
I believe He did that because He loves us. Personally. Individually.
And I believe that when we turn to Him, we are turning to someone who understands us perfectly and knows how to help us.
I'm grateful for what happened in seminary that morning. I'm grateful for the scriptures that helped me see something familiar in a way that touched my heart differently. And I'm grateful for that quiet moment on my garage floor, when I felt the need to stop what I was doing and simply thank my Heavenly Father for His Son.
That's really what this song is.
A thank-you.
And here upon my knees… I give my thanks to Thee. 
