It Is Well

My name is Horatio Spafford.  Back in my prime, I was a successful businessman with a love for the Lord, my wife Anna, and my children.
Life was well.  Until the fateful year of 1871.  Most of my real estate holdings burned to the ground in the famous Chicago fire.  
Just when I thought things couldn't get any worse, my only son Horatio Jr. died of scarlet fever.
Two years later, my good friend Dwight L. Moody was scheduled to speak in Europe, and I decided it was time to take a family trip.  Due to business, however, I was delayed and sent Anna and our four daughters on ahead.
In the middle of the voyage... the vessel on which they took passage was hit by a large ship.
Anna alone survived.
It was two years until I rejoined my wife in England and, as the ship on which I traveled passed over the site of my daughters' deaths, I wrote these simple, yet so intricately meaningful, words:

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.

It is well (it is well)

With my soul (with my soul)

It is well, it is well with my soul.

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,

Let this blest assurance control:

That Christ hath regarded my helpless estate,

And hath shed His own blood for my soul.

It is well (it is well)

With my soul (with my soul)

It is well, it is well with my soul.

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, oh my soul!

It is well (it is well)

With my soul (with my soul)

It is well, it is well with my soul.

And Lord, haste the day when the faith shall be sight

The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;

The trumpet shall sound, and the Lord shall descend,

Even so, it is well with my soul.

It is well (it is well)

With my soul (with my soul)

It is well, it is well with my soul.

God, when all else fails, when I feel like my world is falling apart, when everything I hold dear is shaken...

Help me, Father, to say it is well, it is well, with my soul.