alive.

i shared this story with a friend recently and she said she was encouraged by it. i was glad. the lesson encourage me too. so i thought, perhaps, you might want to read it too. :-)

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i was remembering a day when i was in grad school.
it was winter. the day was bleak - cloudy, grey.

i was driving back from my internship and was noticing the trees. how dead they looked. no leaves, no color, dark, empty-looking. and how a lot of times i feel just like the trees looked.

dead, dark, empty.

but then it struck me that even though the trees LOOK dead in the winter,
they actually aren't.

for some reason it was one of those, "huh, i've never really thought about that" moments. like something in me thought that the trees died in the winter and came back to life in the spring. but they don't. they are always alive, even when they don't look it.

i was encouraged that day by the revelation. and i have been encouraged by it recently. that even at the times when i may look dead and grey on the outside or even feel that way, that i'm not. i am very much alive because i have another Life that is living in me. One that cannot die. One that, in fact, has beat death.

and it is that Life that drives my own. that will change my own. that guides my moves, understands and directs my heart and is my sustenance.

even when you feel like you are losing your battle over there, the One within you is alive and active.
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