I've already won.

Did you know that nerves can get contusions? Because I didn't. At least, I didn't until a nerve in my leg got a contusion. And you know what is really unpleasant? Bending your knee and feeling like someone is trying to cut your leg in half.

People think I'm so brave and so strong all the time, but it's times like this where I feel like they're nuts because I'm just. so. tired. This is the same knee/leg that just recovered from a severe sprain like a week and a half ago. I texted Clayton and told him that just when it feels like my life can't get any more frustrating, it does.

How I feel right now is exactly how I felt my last semester at Campbell: all I want to do is just make it to graduation and it feels like every possible thing in the universe is trying to get in the way of it. I try not to be self-pitying, but sometimes I wish that things would come easily for me just once. Just once. Everything feels like a battle and I'm so tired.

But it's a good thing that I don't serve a God who is dependent on feelings. The God that I serve stays the same, the one constant that I have in a world where everything changes and I control next to none of it. The God that I know has plans that are far above my understanding and doesn't do anything by mistake. That is the one hope and promise that I have to hold on to when everything feels like it's beating me down, like the stress is winning and I'm losing.

Here's the thing I struggle to remember, though - I can't lose. I can't lose because the battle was won 2000 years ago when a man the world thought was dead got up out of a tomb and left death in his place. The battle was won when prophecy was fulfilled and the men who thought they were killing Jesus were completing everything that had been foretold centuries before. The battle is over. We won. That's what Easter is all about. The Lord has already fought for me, I need only to be still. (I'm not very good at that, if you haven't noticed.)

Hope is all I have when things feel like they're too much. But here's what my friend Jon says in "The Wall" that seems perfectly fitting for me right now. Maybe you need it, too.

With God, what seems like a hopeless situation is not only possible, it's favorable, because only God can turn a mess into a message. Only God can turn a trial into a triumph, a test into a testimony, and a victim into a victory. His power is made perfect in weakness, so let us rejoice in our trials and hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, because He who promised is faithful, was faithful, and will always be faithful, no matter how hopeless the situation.

Even when it feels like everything is going wrong, He is faithful.

Thank God for that.