Most of us know the hymn. Fewer of us know the story behind it.
And the story is the thing that makes the hymn what it is. Without the story, It Is Well With My Soul is a beautiful piece of music — a declaration of peace that sounds like something you might say on a good day, when the circumstances are cooperating and the faith feels easy. With the story, it becomes something else entirely: one of the most costly confessions of trust in the history of the church.
The Man Who Wrote It
Horatio Spafford was a successful Chicago lawyer and businessman, a close friend of D.L. Moody, and a man of deep faith. In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed much of his real estate holdings along the shores of Lake Michigan. He had already suffered the loss of his young son to scarlet fever the year before. He was a man who knew grief, but he was also a man who had rebuilt, who had continued, who had kept going.
In November 1873, Spafford planned to travel to Europe with his wife Anna and their four daughters — Annie, Maggie, Bessie, and Tanetta — to assist D.L. Moody in his evangelistic campaigns in England. Business detained Spafford at the last moment, and he sent his family ahead on the French ocean liner Ville du Havre, planning to follow shortly after.
On November 22, 1873, the Ville du Havre collided with an iron sailing vessel in the Atlantic Ocean. The ship sank in approximately twelve minutes.
All four of Spafford’s daughters drowned. Annie was eleven. Maggie was nine. Bessie was five. Tanetta was two.
Anna Spafford survived, found floating unconscious on a piece of wreckage. When the rescue ship reached Wales, she sent her husband a telegram that began: Saved alone. What shall I do?
Spafford boarded the next available ship to meet his wife. As the ship passed near the area of the Atlantic where his daughters had drowned, the captain informed him of their approximate location. It was there, on the water, over the place where his children had died, that Horatio Spafford wrote the words that would become one of the most beloved hymns in the history of the church.
When peace like a river attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul.
What Those Words Actually Cost
It is important to sit with what it cost him to write those words.
He was not writing from the other side of the grief. He was not writing from a place of resolution, where the pain had faded and the perspective had returned and the distance of time had made it possible to see God’s hand in what had happened. He was writing from the middle of it — on the water, over the place where his daughters had drowned, days after receiving the telegram that said saved alone.
He had lost four children. He had already lost a son. He had lost his business holdings in the Chicago Fire. He was a man who had been stripped of almost everything that the world counts as blessing, and he was standing on the deck of a ship over the grave of his daughters, and he wrote: it is well with my soul.
This is not a fair-weather confession. This is not the kind of peace that comes when the circumstances are good and the faith is easy. This is the peace that Paul describes in Philippians 4:7 — the peace that “surpasses all understanding,” the peace that does not make sense given the circumstances, the peace that “guards your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
The peace that Spafford was describing was not the absence of grief. He was not pretending the loss hadn’t happened or that it didn’t hurt. The second verse of the hymn makes that clear: Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come, let this blest assurance control. He is not denying the reality of the trial. He is declaring that something is more real than the trial — and that something is the settled conviction that God is who He says He is, that the gospel is true, that the anchor holds.
The Theology Behind the Declaration
The third verse of the hymn is the theological heart of it:
My sin — oh, the bliss of this glorious thought —
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!
Spafford is not grounding his peace in his circumstances. He is grounding it in the cross. The reason it is well with his soul is not that his daughters are alive or that his business has recovered or that the grief has lifted. It is that his sin — not in part but the whole — has been dealt with. The thing that would separate him from God forever has been nailed to the cross. And because that is true, everything else — even the loss of four children, even the grief that has no bottom — is held inside a larger reality.
This is the theology that makes the declaration possible. Not the denial of suffering. Not the pretense that everything is fine. But the conviction that the most important thing — the reconciliation between a holy God and a sinful person — has already been accomplished. And because it has been accomplished, the soul can be well even when everything else is not.
Isaiah 26:3 says: “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.” Perfect peace — not the peace of good circumstances, but the peace of a mind that is stayed on God. The peace that is not produced by the situation but by the one who holds the situation. The peace that Spafford found on the deck of a ship over the grave of his daughters.
The Anchor That Holds
The fourth verse of the hymn looks forward:
And Lord, haste the day when the faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
The trump shall resound and the Lord shall descend,
Even so, it is well with my soul.
Spafford is not just declaring peace in the present. He is declaring hope for the future — the eschatological hope that the faith will one day be sight, that the Lord will descend, that the story will end the way God has promised it will end. The peace of the present is grounded in the certainty of the future. The anchor holds not just because of what has already been accomplished at the cross but because of what will be accomplished at the return of Christ.
This is the full arc of the Christian hope: the cross behind us, the return before us, and the peace of God holding us in the middle. Not because the circumstances are good. Because He is.
When You Can’t Say It Yet
It is worth saying something for the person who reads this and cannot yet say those words.
If you are in the middle of a grief so deep that it is well feels like a lie — if the loss is too fresh and the pain is too real and the declaration feels like something you are supposed to say but cannot honestly say — then hear this: Spafford did not write those words because he felt them. He wrote them because he believed them. And there is a difference.
Feelings follow circumstances. Belief is grounded in something more solid than circumstances. The peace that surpasses understanding is not a feeling you generate from inside yourself. It is a reality you receive from outside yourself — the settled conviction that the God who gave His Son for you has not abandoned you, that the cross is real, that the resurrection is real, that the story ends the way He has promised.
You may not be able to say it is well today. But you can say: I believe in the God who makes it well. And that is enough to start.
Carry It
The It Is Well Supima Tee is a wearable declaration of the peace that surpasses understanding — for the ones who have found it, and for the ones still reaching for it. 100% American-grown SUPIMA® cotton, handmade in Peru. Made to order in Black, Ocean Navy, and Slate.
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