Disclosure. The video at the end of this post is very sad. Seriously. If you are sitting at Starbucks you might want to watch it later. Or just listen, but don't watch. I am not kidding you. Grab tissues, my friend. If you are already in any sort of fragile emotional state it may bring out the ugly cry.
When I first heard this song, "We Still Believe" by Kathryn Scott. I thought to myself, "Has she heard my story?! Does she know what I've been through? It's like she has read from the pages of my soul!" Then I thought, "Man, I'd love to do this in church, but it's really so specific to my situation..."
Wow. Self-centered much there, Char? I hope I'm not alone in this. Sometimes we get so caught up in our own pain, we get so proud of our own stories, that we forget we're not alone on our journeys. We forget that, honestly, our story may not be that original.
Because here's the thing, everybody has gone through some serious crap in their lives. Everyone. Yes, some stories are a little hairier than others. A little more scary, sad, or serious. And some journeys have happier endings than others. You may think your story truly takes the cake, or you may feel like your stories are insignificant compared to other's. But no story discounts anyone else's. Your pain is your pain. The mountain that you're climbing is your mountain to climb. And we all have them. All of us. We're not alone in our pain. Someone, somewhere has traveled the same dark valleys you have traveled. And at the end of it, they either ran to Jesus or they gave up on Him.
I could list my mountains here. I could give you an earful of painful things that have happened to me, but I won't. Maybe I will another day. But today I'm caught up in this thought...
We still believe.
Through it all. The really bad things and the really good things. Somehow God has captured my heart in such a way that I could never let go. Every tragedy and every wound has eventually brought me closer to Him. He has thoroughly and completely won me. There's no hope for me now. Except what I've found in Him. I know I'm not alone in that.
Yes, my pain was awful. So was yours. And, honestly, it's probably not over. But...
We still believe.