Coming Home To Me by Patty Griffin

Album: Downtown Church (2010)

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This is one of two original Griffin tunes from her collection of sacred numbers, Downtown Church. Christianity Today asked her regarding the lyric, "When you're lost and you're found and you're found and you're lost," what it means to be lost and found in the context of the same gospel song. She replied: "Well, that's the mystery, isn't it? Look, we can talk about beliefs and doctrines and what have you. But when you get older, my experience has been that it's not that simple. People are complicated. That song—like a lot of my other songs, I suppose—is trying to get at what really goes on inside, deep down. It's about feeling alone and abandoned, and simultaneously aware that there is something or someone bigger and outside of you, and feeling connected to that. Both those things are true. It's not one or the other. I don't want to put a label on it. (Laughs). I guess that's sort of a recurring theme with me, isn't it? But both those things are true. That's what I wanted to communicate. You're lost and you're found. Both those things are true."
Griffin's lyrics have always been very emotional and heartfelt, but this album goes even further and features almost all traditional gospel songs, and even one traditional song sung in Spanish. She recorded the album in order to explore her feelings about religion.

Griffin explained in press materials that her own contributions came about after listening to a selection of Bob Dylan's religious work but failing to connect with them, (check out Gotta Serve Somebody and Every Grain of Sand for examples). "Buddy (Miller, producer) sent me a lot of that stuff," she said. "It's just not my point of view. The songs I'm singing, I'm just interpreting someone else's ideas, and I'm not tied to those ideas. Listening to Dylan, who's contemporary, and who's in my genre, if I may be so bold as to say that, I felt like I really had to write my own. And put a couple in there that feel like me."
Griffin described this song as sharing a recurring theme of her music, loneliness and connection, and being about "what really goes on inside, deep down." She sings it in a duet with fellow singer-songwriter and friend, Julie Miller.
In 2010, this song was featured in an episode of the TV show Army Wives titled "Heavy Losses."

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