How To Find a Way to Live Through hard things?
When the woman reached out to hug me just before I got to the door, she whispered and I barely heard it through what was leaking down her cheeks, “I don’t know how I’m going to live through what I am going through right now.”
How do you keep taking just one step after another — when just you want to be on a whole other road?
She pulled back and looked me in the eye:
“Maybe it’s — I just don’t know how — to live through what I just really don’t want to have to go through?”
I read her eyes and she reads mine and how do you hear the voice of the Shepherd still calling your name when the lies of the enemy of your soul keep calling you names?
How do you live through this hard thing — that’s effecting everything? How do you keep finding a way forward — without losing your hope along the way?
How do you keep taking just one step after another — when just you want to be on a whole other road?
You get to decide whether thoughts get to you, or whether you give them to Christ
The woman brushes her cheeks with the back of her hand.
And I don’t know what grief that’s got her cornered at every turn, or if it’s a prodigal child she’s begging to make a u-turn, don’t know if it’s a mountain she’s got to take, or if it’s something that’s trying to take her — but I know that I know that overwhelmed look in her eyes and I feel the cracking ache in her brave voice and the details of our hard may be different, but all of our need for courage for today is the same.
The test results come back, but that doesn’t mean you back down from really fully living.
The relationship keeps fracturing, but that doesn’t mean you let anything break your spirit.
The prices may keep draining any savings, but that doesn’t mean anything gets to actually drain your joy.
The income may start to wither up, but that doesn’t mean you stop seeing all kinds of ripe possibility.
The to-do list and deadlines seem overwhelming, but that doesn’t mean discouragement gets to overcome you.
The knot in your gut that was there last night, may be right there strangling you a bit tighter as soon as you open your eyes in the morning, but you grab hold of that rope and you just tie it to just the next thing and just the next thing and you make that knot in your gut into a knotted lifeline from one moment to just the next thing.
Our battles aren’t won on fields, they are won between our ears. And we get to decide whether we get caught up in all the worries, or if we instead proactively take captive every thought, so Christ takes captive our every fear.
And I cup my friend’s face in my hands. And I nod, because I feel how hard it is too: Everyone is fighting a hard battle — but there are a lot of us fighting hard battles after already losing a whole string of other battles.
Because yeah, sure, it’s one thing to be fighting a hard battle — but it’s a whole other thing to be fighting a hard battle when you feel like you’ve already been on a long losing streak, when you have to keep fighting this battle even though it honestly feels like you’re not winning your battles quite as quickly as everyone else seems to be winning theirs.
But our battles aren’t won on fields, they are won between our ears. And we get to decide whether we get caught up in all the worries, or if we instead proactively take captive every thought, so Christ takes captive our every fear.
You get to decide whether thoughts get to you, or whether you give them to Christ.
You get to keep turning toward the Way and not walk away, and you win the battles behind your forehead when you keep surrendering to Christ as the head of all things.
When you don’t know how to go on, you hang on by passing it all on to Jesus.
When you keep giving everything to Jesus, Jesus keeps you –and then you can’t lose hope, because Hope Himself has you.
I look her in the eye and that’s what I want to tell her:
You win the battles behind your forehead when you keep surrendering to Christ as the head of all things.
The way you live through you hard thing is to vigilantly take captive every thought going through your mind, and make it surrender to the love of Jesus in and around and through everything.
And I tell her that and that I’m with her, with her, and I nod and I mean it.
Because what we all need in our battles is with-ness and witness.
Brokenness needs with-ness and witness — someone to stand with us and someone to see us.
And she nods and squeezes my hand and smiles the bravest. And I whisper to her, “You will live through this.”
You’re going to be okay because Jesus is going before you, and He is never not entirely for you.
You’re always okay if you always stay with Jesus. Things are only truly bad wherever Jesus isn’t there — and where is Jesus truly not there?
You may be fighting a hard battle that you feel like you’re losing — but you’re never, ever losing, if your mind simply stays on the One who wins it all in the end. The battle you have ahead of you is already won, so rest in the One who gave everything to win your heart. Because the truth about every blasted battle is:
What you don’t know how to live through — Jesus already died for.
Where you don’t how to go on — Jesus already went through so you can carry on.
What feels hopeless — is where you meet more Jesus who is all your surest hope.
And that’s what ended up following me all the winding way home, under a smattering of spring stars.
What they call the dark night of the soul may feel as endlessly black as the limitless cosmos — but darkness isn’t God, darkness isn’t infinite. Darkness has limits, darkness has an end, darkness has borders.
And sometimes you exhale like the expanse of a night sky, like even your every breath keeps calling your Father’s name, YWHW.
And you breathe: All darkness has shores, and there is always light rising on the other side. You have to believe this.
And if you can’t believe— just breathe. Next breath, next thing, next step — and know:
He made your every breath to be the sound of His name, YHWH, so as you keep breathing, you keep calling His name, and your breathing becomes the endless refrain of His name, that endlessly comforts your soul.
You’re going to be okay — your every breath sings the refrain of His name, and everywhere that He is, is more than okay.
You’re going to be okay — your every breath sings the refrain of His name, and everywhere that He is, is more than okay.
Just before dawn this past week, we wake early to stand in the dark and witness the Lyrids meteor shower across the night sky. We have to wait in the dark before dawn, wait for our eyes to adjust to the pitch black, wait to see the cascading light.
And when it comes — there is this catching of breath:
Nothing is ever too far gone for Hope’s light to come find you.
And we watch how the meteors live straight through the dark, and win the night, and on the other side, there’s the warming light of the rising dawn.
How do you practically, actually, live through what you don’t know the way through? How it the world do you really take captive every thought and live in the Way Himself, Jesus?
What does it personally look like to form your mind, your days, your life, into the deeply meaningful, cruciform love of Jesus and entrust everything into His hands?
What does it powerfully look like to have a new way of life, a new way of being, when life feels really hard and unpredictable?
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