Once wrapped in the dark of a night in 2016, Angie Killian said she was cradling her infant daughter when a distinct melody entered her mind.
On this night, Killian had already tried rocking her daughter to sleep two or three times, she said. And so quickly adding some words to the new melody, Killian said she tried lulling her baby to sleep once again.
The song and lyrics she improvised then never really became important, the Latter-day Saint songwriter recently told the Deseret News. And they have certainly not become ones she’s publicly shared.
But what became instantly important to Killian was the feeling that overcame her in those late night hours, she said.
The feeling was like “this light that I desperately wanted to just hold on to with all my power and all my might,” Killian said, noting that the postpartum depression she was experiencing at that time had taken her to “such a dark place.”
In contrast, this newfound light swiftly filled her with a desire to use her lifetime of experience with music and playing the piano to write songs of faith for her then infant daughter and two-year-old son.
Fast forward a few months later, and that desire turned into a promise with God.
“If You will send me music, I will write it down and share it with the world,” Killian recently wrote in a thread of posts she made on X. In this thread, Killian briefly recounted the promise she made and how it influenced her journey to write one of her most viewed songs.
Looking back, the promise “sounds so preposterous,” Killian told the Deseret News. She had only just begun fiddling with songwriting, and here she was, promising God she would share anything he sent her with the world.
“I had no idea what I was doing,” she explained. But she knew she was willing.
The strike of a chord and inspiration
Killian’s willingness to keep her “end of the bargain” was tested about a year later when in 2017 a strike of inspiration began calling her to write a song titled “My Own Sacred Grove.”
At this point, Killian was a “tired, young mother” with two children — ages one and three — on her lap, and “one more in (her) belly.”
“I felt overwhelmed, exhausted, and inadequate,” Killian said in her posts on X. So, she tried to reason with God.
“I want to write this song for you, but I can’t do it right now,” Killian said she said in prayer to God. “Can we wait? Until the baby is born? Until he is sleeping through the night? Until he is weaned? Potty trained? In preschool? I just can’t do it right now.”
The strike of inspiration continued, nonetheless. While driving her oldest to preschool the next day, Killian said she heard the first line of the song’s chorus in her head, with words and a melody: “I will find my own sacred grove.”
The next line followed a few hours later: “Away from all of the noise of the world.” And yet another moment later, she heard: “I will turn to prayer, for I know he’s there. I will find my own sacred grove.”
Killian “mildly panicked” because she wasn’t ready, she said. “My prayer from the previous day repeated, a little faster and a little higher in pitch. ‘Please, please can we wait? I just can’t do it right now.’”
Her panic amplified the next day as she began hearing “these big booming chords in octaves” under the words and melody.
“Please, PLEASE can we wait?” Killian said she then begged in prayer. “I just can’t do it right now.”
But the inspiration continued into the next day, and as it did, so came a “new understanding” and a slightly different prayer:
“I know I can’t write this song right now. But I know you can.”
With this prayer, Killian said she turned on a kids TV show and, propping her laptop on the piano, began writing the song.
“I found the melody, the booming octaves, and the twinkling piano hook. I wrote verses and a bridge. And I finished the song on the sixth day,” she said in her recent posts on X.
“To this day, I can promise you that in 2017, I could not have written this song alone. But two people can do anything if one of them is God,” she continued.
Sharing the grove with the world
Sharing “My Own Sacred Grove” with the world was a whole other process, Killian told the Deseret News.
Determined to keep her promise with God, Killian said she quickly went to a studio and recorded the song with herself on the piano and a young man from her Latter-day Saint congregation as the soloist. Their recording was then posted to her YouTube channel in 2017, alongside a free, downloadable copy of the song’s sheet music.
With this, Killian said she thought she had done it. “I shared it with the world,” she said.
But a confusing, yet strikingly specific revelation came to her roughly two years later, when she felt God instruct her to take the song down, scrub the internet of its sheet music, and re-record the song to reupload in January 2020.
“We’d been saving up money to record some new songs,” Killian said. “And in my head, I kept thinking, ‘Well, we’ve already recorded this song, we’ve already released this song (and) we have all these other songs (to record).’
“But the inspiration was very direct. It was: ‘Nope. Take that one down, redo it with a children’s choir, and I need you to release it in January of 2020.’
“And so I did.”
Killian explained she was hesitant at first, knowing her first recording had already garnered about 5,000 views on YouTube. Still, she trusted. And a confirmation of the inspiration she received came slowly.
“We took the song down,” rerecorded it in June 2019 and filmed its music video in July of that same year, Killian said. “And then we just kind of waited.”
A few months later, President Russell M. Nelson of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced that the coming year would be a bicentennial year celebrating the “First Vision” — the event by which Killian’s song was inspired.
“This has got to be the reason,” Killian remembered thinking. “And so in January (2020), we posted the video,... and then just watched as that video blew up and went completely viral.”
Views surpassed those of the original video in a matter of days, Killian explained, adding that the video now has about 2.5 million views.
It’s “interesting how sometimes we have to let go of things that we love for God to bless us with more than we can ever imagine,” she said.
This “whole story was just insanely led, and I feel very lucky and blessed that (God) chose me to be the steward over that song.”
A ‘masterpiece’ with an impact
Killian has written hundreds of songs since “My Own Sacred Grove,” but none of them have ever come as “distinctively” as this one did, she told the Deseret News.
“Never has anything come so clear and complete,” she said. But she added that the spirit of the experience has carried over to her other work, solidifying her conviction that she is not the artist, but rather an instrument.
“I know this song was inspired,” she wrote on X. And in her interview, Killian said the song “still blesses me all the time (and) blesses other people.”
Seeing one’s self as more of an instrument “opens up possibilities that God can do cool things with you,” she added. “If you’re not worried about painting the perfect picture, (and) you’re just the brush,... it’s a very freeing way to think about your life.”
Some of the ways Killian and her song have become instruments to bless the lives of others were seen during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Published just a few months ahead of the pandemic, the song invited listeners to find peace in solitude, “away from all of the noise of the world.” Many listeners have since expressed to Killian that her song was the one that “got us through shutdown.”
“It just brought them so much peace,” she said, then adding that some have told her they played the song daily during that time.
Other ways her song has blessed others have been manifest over time.
“This is truly a masterpiece,” commented one viewer about five years ago. “I feel some sort of a peace as I’m listening to this even though I’m not a member of the LDS Church.”
The viewer, Anna Varonen from Finland, explained that though she was Christian, she found herself in a state of great confusion. She was interested in learning about the Church of Jesus Christ, but couldn’t tell which path was right. Was it continuing as a non-Latter-day Saint? Or, following her curiosity to learn about the church?
The Church of Jesus Christ ”is really a minor one here in Finland where I live. But this really really touched me,” she commented. “I would love to hear what your life as a part of (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) has been and educate myself!”
Killian and others in the comments began interacting with Varonen, helping her understand the peace she was feeling and how her story mirrored that of the church’s founding prophet, Joseph Smith, when he went into a grove of trees to pray.
Communication in the comments slowed as time went on. But Varonen returned to the comments roughly 8 months ago to share where her curiosity led her.
“My story did not end all those years ago when I posted this comment,” she wrote. “I rediscovered this song yesterday and I’m in awe of all that has happened since.
“I continued doing my research for years and finally mustered up the courage to go to church. Through miracles big and small I quickly gained a testimony of the Book of Mormon and was baptized on Sept. 23, 2023 at 19 years old.”
Her decision was “incredibly hard” for her family, but Varonen kept trusting in her Heavenly Father and striving forward, she said.
“I am now serving a full-time mission in the Alpine German-speaking mission and sharing my story with others! Thank you everyone who supported me on this comment chain.”
Reflecting on this “humbling experience,” Killian said she sobbed knowing that something she helped create was able to “impact someone in such a beautiful way.”
“I see miracles in every project, but these are the miracles that truly matter,...” she said. “What a blessing it is that we can be made instruments in (God’s) masterful hands.”
Heavenly Father loves his children
Moved by the topic of “personal revelation” her entire life, Killian said it’s no question why many of her songs reference the topic.
“I’ve always felt very connected to Heavenly Father,” she said. “I know that he hears my prayers, and I know that he answers them in his own way. He doesn’t always answer ‘yes.’ Sometimes he says ‘no,’ but I feel like most of the time he says, ‘Just hold on for a minute. I’ve got a better idea.’”
Through songs like “My Own Sacred Grove,” Killian said she hopes to help people “turn to prayer” with the faith of a child. “(I want them) to be able to trust Heavenly Father with their hearts, their desires and their questions, and just know that he loves them and that he is doing his best to help us through anything that we go through,” she said.
Killian’s other songs seek to inspire listeners, helping them feel “loved” and “cherished” by a Heavenly Father, she said.
Most recently, Killian and her friends wrote and released a song and a music video to support the Latter-day Saint youth theme for 2026: “Walk with Me.”
This new song about daily discipleship, walking with the Lord and letting him be the author of one’s life is titled “Holy Road.” And the song’s music video features more than 30 youth from across Idaho, Utah and Arizona.
“Holy Road” is the fourth youth song Killian and her friends have written in the past four years. “It is truly a labor of love,” she said, “(and we) hope and pray that (these songs) are able to find the youth who need to hear them.”
To watch the new song’s music video, click here. And to download the sheet music for “My Own Sacred Grove,” which was published in this year’s January issue of the church’s “Friend” magazine, click here.