How To Keep Moving When You Keep Falling

I wonder what the disciples were thinking during the Last Supper. Was Jesus somber with the weight of what was coming on His shoulders? Did they worry that their master was quiet or did they not realize His silence meant something extraordinary was coming? Did their eyes meet across the table while they spoke, darting to Jesus as if to say, "is He acting weird this evening?" Or did Jesus give more pieces of wisdom than the book of Matthew lets on. Did we just see a snippet of the conversations that happened, or was it a rather silent evening as they processed what Jesus said?

You see, the last supper is a perfect depiction of what it means to keep moving when everything appears to be crumbling. To the disciples, Jesus death meant a complete unknown to them. Jesus gave them purpose and meaning and a job to do. What would they do without Him? But we look at how Jesus reacted to the crises at hand, and we see that He didn't run from it, but rather, He ran to it in the form of running to His Father as He fell on His face in reverence and said the infamous words: "...if it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet, I want your will to be done, not mine." Matthew 26:39 NLT. In Jesus final acts, He moved by staying absolutely still in surrender to the will of the Father and in communion with Him.

You see, sometimes, to keep moving means to stand still in the wilderness and to catch your bearings because if you were to take one more step, your legs would give out. Sometimes, to move up that mountain and reach the summit you have been longing for, you have to take a moment to breathe because you have reached a new altitude. And sometimes, you choose to stop and take a moment to look back at where you have come from and to admire how far you've climbed. Moving doesn't always look like a strong and steady hike. Exhaustion overwhelms even the most experienced athletes.

Sometimes, courage is just waking up and taking your next breath and walking out your door to see today. Because at the end of the day, God never did say He wouldn't give you more than you can handle. I know many who would agree, and Paul certainly did and expressed that when he says in 2 Corinthians 1:8; "...We were crushed and overwhelmed beyond our ability to endure, and we thought we would never live through it." I believe that God gives us so far beyond what we can handle so that we are drawn closer to Him and that we are made to see His glory in the outcome, and that in our trials, He brings us peace and comfort if we let Him. We see that as we move to verses 9 and 10. "In fact, we expected to die. But as a result, we stopped relying on ourselves and learned to rely only on God, who raises the death. And He did rescue us from mortal danger, and He will rescue us again. We have placed our confidence in Him, and He will continue to rescue us."

Because here is the truth:

Life is full of things you can't handle on your own and we were never meant to walk through it alone. I know that the only way I made it through my husband's affair and being abandoned while I was pregnant and on bedrest was through the very grace of God. The only way I made it through infertility was God. My father's life-ending cancer. Miscarriage. Loss. Single motherhood. Financial crisis and ruin.

I hope that one day, when you reminisce back on your life, you will have no regrets because you will see that your story is what made you who you are today. That you will see God's faithfulness in it all because great is His faithfulness. That even now, you will show up for the hard things because you know that the hard things are what produce endurance, and those are the very things that will refine you and create you and change you.That you feel so deeply in your being that you know the feeling of peace that overwhelms you could only ever be from God because it makes so little sense. I pray that your story touches someone's soul in a way that it aches and feels overwhelming joy in the same instant and that it pulls their existence apart within the dichotomy of it and causes them to question that which they think to be true.

And I hope against all hope that after all that you have experienced, you will always remember that you are free to begin again and again and again and again, and that the lie of the enemy holds no weight because you have an unlimited amount of resets in this life within fullness of God's love and grace for you if you'll just accept it. And most importantly, that you will see just how far you have come through the brokenness, and that God isn't done with you yet. Let go, and trust that He is God and that even if you feel alone and lost, He has not forsaken you, and that to do so would be against His very nature. Cast your cares on Him and taste sweet relief.