[Intro - felt piano, warm and low]

[Verse 1 - hushed]
I kept a ledger all my life
Before I knew its name
Every kindness had a price tag
Every shelter had a claim
So when the good life found me
I did what debtors do
I started scrubbing, started climbing
Started working double through

[Verse 2 - acoustic joins]
A clean job and clean fingernails
A clinic and a test
I was buying back the damage
I was earning my own rest
One clean inch at a time, I thought
I'll climb to where he stands
And a man read by a lamp one night
With the whole answer in his hands

[Chorus - major, weight coming off]
It was already paid
Before I ever asked
Signed and sealed and finished
Before my first bad past
The debt I have been dying under
Died instead of me
Somebody paid it all in full
In advance
And for free

[Verse 3 - brushed drums arrive]
He read me that the ungodly
Are the ones that grace picks first
Not the improved, not the scrubbed-up
Not the girl who broke her thirst
A robe already finished
For the worst thing I had been
The covering came before the clean
Never the other way again

[Chorus]
It was already paid
Before I found the room
Older than my rap sheet
Older than my womb
The bill I have been running from
Was stamped and filed away
Somebody signed it with His name
In advance
Paid

[Bridge - instruments subtracting, near solo voice]
I don't remember the night it turned
Same as I don't remember the rain
The things that ever saved my life
Were never things I arranged
I only know I stopped one night
Put the whole project on the floor
And rested like a debtor
Who isn't one anymore

[Final Chorus - quiet and certain, low harmony]
It was already paid
That's the whole receipt
I stopped climbing up the mountain
It came down to me
And years on there's a building
With the old word on the door
Pre-paid, come in, it's covered
That's what the word was always for
It was already paid
Already paid
In advance
And for free

[Outro - piano alone, chord ringing out]