The Things I Don't Know

Gratitude here is aimed at what Hannah Kerr cannot see. The chorus keeps circling “Thank you, thank you / For thousands of things that I don't know,” and the verses explain why: a thousand nights of danger when God “did not blink an eye,” prayers answered that she has since forgotten, protection from enemies she never met.

The bridge is the most honest stretch. She names the “near misses and stupid decisions” and the “pain that I lived in that was self-inflicted,” and credits God's hope with saving her “from myself.” The outro widens the list to “all the storms I haven't seen,” “all the fires you put out before they burned me,” and the tears she will never cry, so the thanks grows as the list of unseen rescues does.

Psalm 121:3 stands behind the sleepless-nights image, since the one who keeps watch “will not slumber,” and Psalm 91:3 adds deliverance from the snare before it closes. Most testimony songs thank God for a rescue the singer witnessed; this one thanks him for the ones nobody witnessed.