Hope When You Need to Stand Again

Join me this week as I take a look back at what I have learned through picking a Word of the Year. This is a re-post from earlier this year...My Word for 2015? HOPE

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When devastation hits we need to know there is Someone standing by our side. In 2013, things fell apart for me. I fell apart. A huge chunk of my life would never be the same again. I mourned the loss of what was my normal. I mourned that I could never go back. I mourned the fact that when the damage was done I would become someone else. But I did not mourn the loss of the One who stood beside me. In the heartache He was all grace.

I love words. Strange as it sounds, words are my life...I write with them. I teach foreign ones {Spanish} to students. I love and study  the ones God wrote. One of the words I hold dear is "restoration". Silly, I know, but over the past few years that word has taken on a whole new life for me. I want restoration more than ever. I want to be the person who is whole, healed, and restored, but I am slowly realizing that being whole, healed, and restored doesn't look like I thought it would. I wanted life and myself to go back to the way it was. Yet, I know, I will never go back. I can't retrieve the person I was a few years ago. She doesn't exist. So how in the world could I ever be restored?

A few weeks ago,  I did what every word lover does...I looked it up. "Restoration" is not what I thought it was. The root word for "restore" comes from a word that means "to stand". To restore is to make the building, the person, or the work of art "stand" again {or in the case of art..."to stand out again."}. It also has other meanings: repair, renew, rebuild.

I was in need of some repair. I needed a God to stand by my side and help me stand again. I needed Someone to make me strong. When life falls apart God stands. He stands in the gaps of our lives. He stands up for us. He stands and listens to our pleas. Most of all, He stands in order to pick up the pieces of our lives. Like a father beside his young child in the waves, God stands beside us so that when we fall He can stand us back up again. That is restoration...to be able to stand again when life has pulled you under. You may stand up again with a few bruises, but God isn't taken aback by the imperfections. In fact, He uses them for His glory and our benefit.

Are you under the waves right now? Falling to pieces and in need of a bit of restoration? Go to the God of grace who restores those that need to learn to stand again. He's standing...waiting for you.

Need more hope? See all the Verses of Hope.