Stand

I'm not a big fan of Rascal Flatts music but coming home a couple nights ago I heard "Stand" and, being one of their first songs, I had forgotten it and the words. But they are really good lyrics (I think they would have been better sung by someone else but who am I) and while they talk of personal strength, I hear a different strength in the words. A strength that I can not find on my own to stand but one that I am given each day a strength from somewhere other than myself. Stand, how do you stand when life "feels like a candle in a hurricane"? Stand. How when it feels "like a novel with the end ripped out"? How exactly to do you stand? Well in the words of the song lyrics "you bend til you break, cause it's all you can take, on your knees you look up, decide you've had enough, you get mad, you get strong, wipe your hands, shake it off, then you stand". IF ONLY!!!! Many of us have had times in our lives where it just seems like the life we were handed is a tragedy written and played out by Shakespeare himself. Written for love and life, with a few bumps in the script, and ending with heartless tragedy. Then how, in all of that play we live can we stand?
While I like this song (and if you haven't heard it look it up), I find that the words find inner strength that, after awhile, we muster up and become strong. And I know that to be true because of my past experiences in 'mustering up', 'getting over it', 'having enough', and getting up and standing. While that worked for the inner me, the one and only me, it didn't work for my life. Because even tho I was standing on the outside, I was falling apart on the inside and eventually, in one way or another, that would come out...usually in a bad way. Over the past 3 years, God has been working on those parts of my life that I have "had enough with" and "buried deep inside" and He alone worked me through many things and is still working thru many things in my life. But, and like many of us, I want to do things on my own, that's what it means to be grown -up, adult....right? Well, that's a very touchy debatable place in many lives...some say yes, others say that you can't do anything alone. In these days and weeks of my recent life, I have had to stand when I didn't want to, be part of a family when running away and hiding seemed more logical, and in the end I have had to stand in the midst of a hurricane without my inner self (because she ran and hid...really she did).
Paul touched on many things in his letters to believers one of those things was being able to stand in faith thru grace. In Romans 5:1-5, Paul says (I don't know who he's talking or writting too by the way) "1..since we have beenjustified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access by faith into the grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perserverance; 4 perserverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit..." I keep being told that Lee and I are doing well, that its a process to move thru these times of dispare, anguish, heartache, disappointment, anger, and sadness. But when it comes right down to it, in looking at us every day (only from the inside mind you), we are not the ones moving. We would be happy living every moment in our dispare, anguish, heartache, disappointment, anger, and sadness...trust me I know I would, it would be much easier and safer for me personally. But we are being moved, moved in a direction that we can not stop because somewhere in our lives we decided to stand in faith because God placed His grace over our lives. And with that we were given hope to be able to stand thru the sufferings of this life, this Shakespearien tragedy that didn't just end but forced a continuance with our daughters, our son's friends, and others around us. I never knew, and still don't know, what it means to "stand" not really but somewhere in my life the tragedy that is being played out holds hope in the end. A hope that I can not see and a hope that is giving me grace to stand. So I wonder today, because even tho I do not wish anyone this life story tragedy, what tragedy are you living thru? What winds of the hurricane are causing your candle to get blown around? And how do you see your tragedy ending? Does it end like all of Shakespeare's tragedies or does it actually have a next act or paragraph after the tragedy? I can't tell you how to stand thru this time, I can only say that this is a moment and thru faith I have grace on which to stand. What are you standing on?