WHO

I'm a hopeful coward. There's simply no better way to describe who I am. And maybe that's who we all are, just a bunch of hopeful cowards just trying to get by...

But I am no longer trying to get by. I am trying to live. Abundantly, truly live. And the beauty of being a hopeful coward means that I have something to hope in. And for me, that's God. Ah, we have a pretty beautiful love story that has gone on for years. I could try to write it out, spell it out for you, because I know that it would offer you hope, but it would be out of date after one day because the story is ever-growing. It is never done because I continually fail him and he continues to love me in spite of that. Every day he does. It's a beautiful love story unlike anything this world has to offer, and still, embarrassingly enough, I sometimes I have to kick myself to be brave for him in return.

And that's where the whole coward part comes in. My sin enables me to cowardice. It hushes the inevitable whisper of Christ's grace that is everywhere, stitched all across every event that has ever occurred in my life. My sin, my lack of wonder and awe that he not only deserves but is entitled to, is the reason for my cowardice.

Paradoxically, my cowardice, my lack, my failings and my shortcomings are met with God's grace. His overwhelming grace that covers my every day. The grace that is being whispered all throughout the world, if you would just listen. Sometimes, I too, fail to listen for it. I fail to notice it. But do you hear it? Because it's there. It is spilling out all over and it is the reason we have the ability to rise above our cowardice. It is what enables us to choose to be brave.

So this is my attempt, this blog, to whisper, too. To whisper of his grace in a world filled with yelling, with hopeless banter, frustrated shouts, with tired eyes and tears shed. To whisper into the cracks, the aches, so many that I have been victim of, that his grace is here. All around you. To whisper of his love, his love that wraps me up every day, that catches me every time I fail, a father's love that reaches, that beckons for his lost children.

It is only a whisper, and I am only a college student, and I fail him every day, but I have hurt, I have ached, I have writhed in the pain of hopelessness only to be soothed by the whisper of his grace. I have stared at the shattered pieces of my life and seen his glory, his love and his comfort shining through the cracks. I have ran so far in the opposite direction of his presence only to be met with his arms, his unavoidable presence, his longing to love me and enter the darkest parts of me, of which I had been hiding from him. So I will whisper. The encouragements he sends into my life, the lessons I so painfully learn, the ache I feel; I will whisper in the hopes that they reach the yells, the shouts, the sobs, and they will provide hope to the other cowards, that they give you hope. And maybe, maybe with this hope, we can all choose to be brave.