Good Friday

So..

Usually around this time of year I will write something about Easter. About how I am so grateful that HE is alive.

And I am. So incredibly grateful that my God? Is alive.

But tonight at the Good Friday services at RockHarbor I was rocked a little bit. And the funny thing was I knew that I was rocked by it before I even came to church. How so?

This is my Good Friday story- This morning I woke up on the beautiful day off. This moment I have been waiting for, for a couple months. And I went on a walk with my friend Mari.

We were talking, catching up, having some serious convo when I came to a realization. It's one I have had before; I've even said it before but for some reason on this day it impacted me a lot.

It was this: I firmly believe, from the bottom of my heart that if I wasn't a christian; if I didn't have Jesus in my heart I would NOT in any way shape or form have survived the last 3 years of my life. I don't think I would have made it. I would have been crushed. I would have given in to the overwheleming depression.

I honestly don't think I would be alive.

But through all of this, through the dark, the despair, the crushing hopelessness? I always had a light at the end of the tunnel. I always had a still, small voice telling me I was going to get through it. Tell me He was going to help me through it.

But in all of the soul searching, in everything that I have talked about, prayed about, I have never attributed all of those feelings to this day.

To the day my Jesus hung on a cross. To the moment when my Jesus died to defeat death.

I know that in that moment He carried all my sins. The stupid decisions that I choose to make, the cutting words I say. He took them away.

But He also gave me a hope to live in the world that would try and try to bring me down. Hope to live in a world that was completely broken.

A world that would and is trying to break us. Trying to make us broken.

Today I realized that when Jesus died on the cross? 

He became my nightlight in the darkness.

He became the person, the God that would get me through the hell I have gone through. 

I am always thankful for the cross. Thankful for the opportunity to continually lean on and confess the things I am not so proud.

But today I am more thankful for the fact that because of the cross I was not crushed. Because of the cross I am not dead. Spiritual death or literal death.

So thank you Jesus for the cross..

thank you for making beautiful things out of us.

And for the knowledge that you will come again.