Strength

You know...the funny thing about valleys is that they are sometimes nearly impossible to pull yourself out of.

I had a heck of a health scare about a month ago, and despite receiving a much appreciated "get out of jail free" card, my overly anxious heart can't help but anticipate the next bump in the road.  It seems to always be something.  Our lives are never as perfect as we want people to assume that they are.  It's funny that we put on such a facade to make ourselves look good, while actually feeling like we are wading through garbage and getting nowhere fast.  The truth of the matter is that a health scare like that reminds you that you aren't invincible.  The intangible things really can touch your life.

Truly it's said best that "you are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away".  It's hard not to get caught on that...realizing how finite life is and how little control we have over it.  Truth of the matter is that all of us are on a collision course with the end of our lives...it's just a matter of how quick the car is moving.

So, I guess where I find myself currently is trying to repack all those fears that have been let loose from Pandora's box and live this life in a way that acknowledges that those fears exist and that they are legitimate, but that living fully is so much more legitimate than they will ever be.  Worrying isn't going to change the future.  6 months down the road I could get bad news.  I could be all the way across the country, completely lacking a support system, and get bad news.  But the truth of the matter is that God is making a way for me to grad school in Boston and he is making a way for me to battle the challenges I face.  Since when did we get dropped on our faces in a "I completely can't handle this...no way, no how" sort of way.  I sure haven't been there.  And I actually can't think of anyone who has.  Even those who have faced the worst of the worst have been met with grace in the midst of it.

Strength is a funny thing....it's the thing that gives you the ability to climb up out of that valley and to venture on even though you sense there are more valleys waiting on the path you walk.

"He gives power to the weak and strength to the powerless" Isaiah 40:29