These words are the lyrics for the song What Faith Can Do by Kutless. They are more than words or lyrics. This is how I approach life, now.
It is very ironic that I placed this song in a playlist that I keep in my car and also downloaded onto my wife's iPod just short of a year before my diagnosis with Parkinson's disease. I thought it was a good song and at the time I was really getting into the lyrics about broken hearts becoming brand new. You see my wife and I were given a chance by God to fall in love, again. We had both left a failed marriage, we had both prayed about meeting someone special, and we often wondered why God put us two together when we were separated by over five hundred miles.
I think part of the reason why I had added this song in our playlist was that my wife had just been given the great news that a mass that was discovered on her brain just three short months previous had completely disappeared. We knew God's hand was in it. We knew that because we had faith. But now our faith has been brought to face an even bigger test.
I have seen everything that is mentioned in the song. We will all fall at some time in our daily life and fail to hit the mark. Whether it's a failed marriage or an attempt to reach a new goal that was unsuccessful, we find within us a strength that we did not know existed. We rise up from the ashes just like the Phoenix.
We know what others feel like because we've been there, too, and we have taken that old adage, ‘what does not kill you will only make you stronger,” and built upon the wisdom's from our miscues to rise up and be successful.
But now we're at a crossroads. One can choose to give up or accept that this is their lot in life, but when I wake up in the morning the sun hasn't gone away, the clouds are still there, and the mountains haven't gotten any smaller. It is true. You gotta face the clouds to find the silver lining and I have so many silver linings in my cloud. I have my wife, my family and friends, my colleagues, my students, and most importantly, I have God.
I have been asked to take that step out on the water. I have not asked God, “Why me?”, but I thank him for letting me say, “Why Not Me!” In the days ahead, I will continue to believe and be thankful for how God has blessed me. I know there'll be good days and there will be bad ones, I know there will be times when I just want to give up because I am human after all. But I'll never stop praying for that miracle because prayers do get answered.