Living vs. Surviving

I want to die and let you give your life to me that I might live. –taken from the song, Make My Life a Prayer to You by Kathy Troccoli

Recently I watched a story about Gabby Giffords, the Congresswoman who suffered a gunshot to her brain and survived. I was so deeply inspired by her determination and will to live. She overcame tremendous odds just to survive, and is now overcoming even more odds by just how far she has come in therapy. What is that in her that keeps pushing her through every day? That question cannot be answered by science, or be explained through by DNA. No, you can only look at it and see that it was put there by our Creator. When He created us He gave us something inside that keeps us pushing forward when things are at their hardest. And that’s not all…..

I thought about this concept and how it applied to old life habits that are hard to die on their own, and how I made it to be where I am today. I lived through some areas of trauma as a child, and looking back I wonder how I was able to handle it. I did it because of what my creator placed within me. He equipped me with coping skills to make it to the next level. There are times I’ve been so hard on myself because of the way I've coped with certain circumstances, and I have to stop and remind myself to be grateful that I survived. I think God is ok with us carrying on with the coping skills we acquire in times like that, just as long as we don’t live there. That’s been a hard lesson to learn. So often with me I defined living by coping instead of surviving by coping. They are 2 totally different things. How short are we selling ourselves when we accept our coping skills as a way of life, instead of living a life that could be perfected by Him? As our creator, He doesn’t want to see us stuck in a place of struggle and pain, He wants us to use what we’ve been through as a way out, and way through, not a way of life. He gives us a responsibility to wait for the next level of maturing, once the coping skill has outrun it’s necessity. The best part of that is that He puts the burden on us, He wants us to choose. He’s a gentleman and will not barge His way in our life.

In each moment we find ourselves going through tough times, or places we know we are coping and not living, we should remind ourselves that that level is only temporary. God equips us with coping skills, but He more importantly wants to give us fuller life afterwards…..His life. We get into trouble when we allow the coping skill to become the way we define our life. That’s usually where world patterns begin to form, instead of living a God kind of life. We can only trust in that pattern for so long until it turns into something that hinders us, rather than helps us. We have to be open to Him, and prayerfully tell Him that we’re willing to die to those things in order to have life. Life not defined by a mere existence, but life more defined in a Psalm 18:30 (“As for God His way is perfect”) definition.