I started this post last Friday. Good Friday. The night we remember Christ’s darkest moment. I didn’t publish it, but better late than never, right? The message in my heart is still the same. Happy (Belated) Easter.
Lately I look at this blog, with so many words filling my heart, and not knowing how to get any of them out of my head, through my fingertips, and onto the screen.
My heart has been full of sadness and overwhelm lately. The other morning I read the most awful, heart-wrenching blog post by Summer Minor. It was a suicide letter, really. A giving in, giving up, saying good-bye. Summer is just seven months older than me, and she has three kids. We are alike in many ways, but she struggles with depression and bipolar disorder, and that changes everything.
Her husband left her and took the kids. In her overwhelming sense of aloneness, she decided it would be best for her kids if she went away. She truly believed she wouldn’t be missed. Luckily, an amazing thing happened through Twitter and the blogosphere and her disconnected network of online and offline friends. She was reached before it was too late.
But even in that victory, I wonder how she is doing really, how her kids are doing, and I think about how dangerously close they came to losing her.
I wanted to write a post titled, “Please Don’t Quit,” because Summer’s story wrecked me so deeply. It hit far too close to home. And then I remembered that it was Good Friday, and that Christ faced his darkest moments, his greatest sense of abandonment, on that Friday centuries ago. He faced it for you, and He faced it for me.
And because He did, we can overcome. By the Blood of the Lamb, and the word of our testimony.
On Sunday at church, Chris and I dropped Mackenzie off in the nursery and actually got to sit in the worship service. It was incredible. We sang two of my most favorite songs, but mostly, I was so, so overwhelmed at how real God has been to me in this last year. As we sang, “How He Loves Us,” I remembered those moments in surgery the day Mackenzie was born and the overwhelming comfort and presence of God. We sang, “Our God is greater, Our God is stronger, Our God is higher than any other…” and I remembered standing in the hallway at church, holding Mackenzie, crying, and praying that God would heal my mom, and give her the will to live, and the strength to fight cancer. He did, and He has, and I am so, so blessed.
If you are facing a dark moment, please be comforted by my testimony. Some days the battle seems ongoing, but our God truly is greater. He truly is stronger and more powerful than any other. Most of all, He is true to His promises. He is faithful with that which we entrust to Him. Because of Him, I know we can overcome.
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