Grace Is Greater

 In an instant, my heart rate jumps and begins to speed. My breathing becomes shallow, and I can feel the gasps. My body suddenly springs into some kind of defense-mode when the call comes through from dad: he's at work and not feeling well at all...symptoms indicating yet another trip to the emergency room. In the last decade, this scenario has happened so many times that, even when I try to choose the trusting way, it's like I somehow still can't. I automatically assume the worst...because the worst is always what happens. Fear pulses through me. Mom leaves the house to go pick up dad and take him in because...well...I can't. 

You see, for all my desperately wanting to live a life without fear - a life that chooses brave, that chooses faith always - situations like these put me into a certain auto-setting that kicks in before I even have time. Before I can even try to stop myself from going there, I'm right in the throws of an anxiety attack, and my whole being screams a loud, "HERE WE GO AGAIN!" And there I am once more... trying to look up. Trying to calm this storm with a word of truth. Trying to cry out to God that I can't do this and somehow attempting to believe that He can when I feel nothing but doubt inside. 

How do you tell somebody whose never walked in your shoes that you are who you are because trauma shaped your life? How do you attempt to help others understand that the typical story of the so-called "perfect life" isn't YOUR story? That pain has written its lines into you deep, and you've been formed into the person you are today because you've been tested, broken, and busted up? That you feel for the world like you do because you've seen this fallen world at its worst and felt its effects the most... 

As I try to slow myself down, three words enter my mind. Three words that continue to call me back from the brinks of my own desperation time and again. Three words that give life when it feels like the hope is being snuffed right out from within me: 

Grace. Is. Greater.

A day later, dad returns home having checked out fine and the problem appearing to be a simple one for once. Thankful, I go into recovery myself - doing what I need to do every time this happens in order to find my peace again. And I keep mulling over this concept that grace is greater. And then I begin to ask myself to list all the things that He's greater than. All the ways He is more. And, as I do, I start to see that He always wins. Always overcomes. That even the worst fear on earth doesn't stand a chance against the love of God. 

Grace is greater than our depression. 

Greater than our weakness.

Greater than our despair.

Greater than our unbelief. 

Greater than our skepticism and doubt. 

Greater than our fear. 

Greater than our pain.

Greater than our sin. 

Grace doesn't minimize our suffering. God doesn't deny our problems exist, and He certainly doesn't want us to deny them either. Looking at our situations honestly is part of the process of coming to terms with our circumstances and accepting that life is hard. Again, grace doesn't minimize our suffering. But it does give us something against which to measure our suffering...because of the cross. 

And this is why grace triumphs even in our worst moments: God's suffering was nothing like ours but because of His suffering, He can meet us in our darkest days as no human being ever can. And unlike when Jesus had to endure the wrath and rejection of His Father on the cross, we have the continual love and compassion of Christ extended to us as His children in the midst of our trials. We do not have a God who is unable to meet us where we're at. 

On those days when we feel like we just can't handle it anymore, the cross proves that there is no length to which God won't go to make humanity know the depths of His love. And there is always more grace, more God for everything that every moment of every day demands of us. Yes, even the darkest ones. Especially the darkest ones. 

Over the past several weeks, as I've had more hard days than good ones, I've returned to the scripture passage in 2 Corinthians 12: 7-10 where the Apostle Paul describes his struggle with an un-named situation that he asked God three times to remove. He admits he didn't desire to have this on-going test continue. Whether it was physical, spiritual, emotional, or mental, we have no idea. But he reveals that he wanted it to be gone. But God gave him an answer to his prayers in a form that we'd probably think was crazy did we not have it in the Word of God as proof of its truth. God didn't remove Paul's suffering, but He assured him that grace would be there. That his weakness would be perfected in his dependence upon God's power. He told him that grace was greater. And Paul accepted this answer and welcomed God's plan if it meant that Christ would be put on greater display in his life. 

This is a reminder to you and I that our suffering is never the end of us. It may bring us to the end of us, but that is merely where we'll discover in bigger measure the goodness and love of God. For all the evidences in our lives that evil is winning, for all the lies that we don't have what it takes for this fight, for all the times when darkness seems to obscure the face of God and we feel the most alone - this truth still stands above it all, and it is something to comfort ourselves with until the light returns again: 

Grace. Is. Greater.