Get Up Again
I recently watched the movie Judy, the epic story of the one and only Judy Garland. It’s a tragic tale of a colossal talent and her quest for survival, amidst a backdrop of betrayal, rejection, and addiction. She was, by all accounts, abused and conspired against by those who should have protected her. Instead, they stripped her of everything she had except the one thing they couldn’t take — the love for her children.
Somehow, she kept getting up again and again.
If you are like me, there is not a whole lot in your life that would resemble the circumstances of this iconic woman. My singing is limited strictly to the shower, and even then it would warrant a less than stellar review. I likely will never be famous or have paparazzi following me. I pray to God that I don’t have to marry five times to find the one that lasts.
And yet, aren’t we all looking for something that is just somewhere over the rainbow?
We are all bound together by the human condition. We all want to be loved. We all search for faithfulness, for a tribe of people who will understand us at our best and worst, who won’t turn their backs on us when we need them. We all quest for survival in different ways, yet they are strikingly the same.
We want to know that we mattered, that our lives stood for something.
In big and little ways, we feel at times that it is hard to get back on our feet. Maybe it’s a diet we keep failing to stay on. Maybe it’s a commitment to stop charging our credit cards. Maybe it’s to let go of someone who is no longer good for us. We’re always trying to improve at something.
There is a place that we all get to in life, when we understand that perfection is not possible. Everyone — everyone — has wrinkles and blemishes and scars. We are all alike. We all carry around the baggage of our hurts, the history of our lives, the hope that tomorrow will somehow be better.
We’re all just trying to get back home to Kansas.
What keeps you going? What keeps you getting up each morning, tying up the laces of your shoes, and trying again? What causes you to lift up your chin and smile when inwardly you want to give in to discouragement?
For me, it is that I still believe God’s not done with me yet.
I am astounded at the ways that man — the world — will let us down. It is incomprehensible how parents can fail their children, how covenants are so casually broken, how promises made are not promises kept. Character and integrity, it seems, are negotiable.
Thankfully, God is not man.
Faith is like having someone that you love come up from behind and lift underneath your arms so you can stand. It’s not always knowing what comes next, but that somehow, someway you will get through it. It’s understanding that He is with you even when it feels that no one else is.
Proverbs 24:16 says “Though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again.” What I know about God, is that He always has a plan. Unanswered prayers, broken hearts, seasons when it feels like we are wandering forty years in the desert… All are taking us to a place where it will all somehow make sense.
We’ve got to get up again and again and again.
I wish I knew why life is sometimes so hard. I wish I understood how people — like Judy, and you, and me — would sometimes feel like we have to fight to be loved and cared for. I wish I knew why we sometimes have to go through things that knock the stuffing right out of us.
But God does.
And though He doesn’t cause the things that happen to us, He has a way of putting us back together again and making it turn out for our good.
He’s not done with you yet, either.
He wants you to know, that He has already given you a heart, a brain, courage, His mercy and grace, so that you will get back up and keep on trucking down the yellow brick road. In everything that happens, we are growing and changing and being readied for what comes next.
Sometimes, it is day by day. Sometimes it’s minute by minute. You don’t need ruby slippers or to see the wizard. God already knows where you are and where you’re heading.
And it is good.
Go on. Get up — and sing your heart out, baby.
Your rainbow is just up ahead.