I have been through two car wrecks that should have been fatal. I have serious back pain 98% of the time and it messes with my ribs and my neck and pinches nerves and sometimes makes entire limbs go numb. I struggle daily with school and often think I'm not smart enough or good enough. My family life and just life in general is far from perfect or ideal and so am I. And yet, I have faith.
"After everything you have been through, how can you believe?" I'll tell you how. I woke up this morning. I am not hooked up to a machine that breathes for me. I am not paralyzed. I am not on bed rest. I can run and jump and sing with joy. I am at a college that has helped make my dreams come true and only continues to do so. I have so much good in my life. And you do too. So, if you can sit here and ask me how I have faith, I have the right to sit here and twist the question: After everything you have been through, how can you not?
If you come to me wanting advice, be prepared for a Godly answer. For without Him, I am nothing. He is the reason that I have been able to help so many people. I say a prayer asking him to speak through me and He has yet to fail me. In any and every aspect of my life, He has yet to fail me. It's like the "Footprints in the Sand" poem. I've taken the liberty to expand it into something that I apply to my daily life. Sometimes we have days where things go wrong but we stay standing and realize it's just a small inconvenience. I call them "ripple days" because we still get hit and may sway but we stay standing, like with ripples. Other days we get knocked down and pushed under the water so we feel like we are drowning. Sometimes we get pushed and pulled around in the under current and it's so hard to see which way is up. I call these "wave days". On the really good days it feels like we are just taking a walk on the beach, dipping our toes in. This is where the "Footprints in the Sand" poem comes to play. Still sometimes, even on the wonderful beach days, we see only one pair of prints in the sand thinking that God has left our side. However, this isn't the case. When we look back and see only one set of prints, this is when He has carried us, like the poem states. He carries us then, He stands by our side and holds us strong and steady as the ripples come and move us about, and He is there too during our wave days. On the days that we feel as though we are drowning, we must remember that we have a God that walks on water.
It is so easy to focus on all the negative in the world around us. Things go wrong. You will always find something wrong if you look for it. But there will always be something right and good if, again, you just look. So why would you focus on the negative? That's like having your hand on the light switch but choosing to live in the darkness. He has never left your side, He has never dropped you. Why would He start now? Because even when He seems so far away, we must remember that if we just look a little harder as the bubbles surround us we see that His hand is outstretched waiting to pull us to the surface. Because on the days that we feel as though we are drowning, we must remember that we have a God that walks on water.
Life gets hard and overwhelming and sometimes painful but in the instances that we are living our lives the way God intended, by serving and helping others, these things seem to just disappear. He has such a magnificent plan for us, one that is simply incomprehensible. It will be revealed to us in His time, when He knows that we are ready for the next step. And one day we will return to our father in Heaven. Until then, I will worship from here. I will go forward in obedience and trust that my Lord is sending me exactly where I am supposed to be. We can take the first step even though we may not see the top of the staircase, why is this any different? There may be more steps, we may be encased in darkness. But just as it is to travel to the top of a lighthouse, the view at the end is so worth it and the light that now surrounds you only helps, never hinders. All because you trusted that there was a beautiful ending and took that first step. We must trust and know without a doubt that we are His number one priority. In His eyes we are all equals, He loves us all the same, no matter our differences or our choices. He has made us in His image and loves us as His own. After all, we are all children of God. He will never abandon us or lead us to a place where He is too far away. Because on the wave days, we must remember that we have a God that walks on water.
"He reached down from Heaven and rescued me; He drew me out of deep waters." ~Psalms 18:16
