You're Good, and You're Brave.

“I was up on a hill I was out there alone, when the shots all rang out, and bombs were exploding”

These are the lyrics to the climax of one of my favorite songs. The lyrics come from the song “Letters from War” by Mark Shultz. This song made a very large impact on me at one particular time in my life, though I had probably heard it thousands of times before this one. This story goes back to about a year ago, when I was a student at Liberty University. My friends and I had gone to “the rot” which is the dining hall at Liberty, and I had ran into an old friend of mine, with whom I had had a falling out with and hadn’t spoken to in several months. We ended up talking for a few minutes and then since we lived in the same dorm, I gave her a ride back to the dorm. While we were leaving, we were discussing the the song “Majesty” or rather the songs, seeing as how we were talking about how there were many versions but a few of them were more special to us.

When I pulled out of the parking lot, a student walked out in front of my car and I hit him. Now, I remind you I was only pulling out, so I had only let my foot off of the brakes when I hit him, so the force was equivalent to that of knocking a book off your bed or shutting a door, but nonetheless, he made a big deal of it. Nothing was really done, so we left the rot and headed back to the dorm. I dropped her off at the entrance of the dorm and went to the parking lot to park my car. I walked back to my dorm in a bit of a daze, head racing and heart pounding. I finally made it back and struggled to find the keys to my dorm, but my hands were shaking like a little old lady on a cold winter day, so it was with great difficulty that I finally pulled them from my bag. I walked down the hall and into my room, and much to my relief, my roommates were away. I started thinking about everything that had just happened, which also lead me to think of things that had happened the previous day and then the previous day and on and on until I found myself laying on the floor looking up at the ceiling with the room spinning as I watched a motion picture of all of the stressful events of my life.

After about an hour of watching my life flashing before my eyes, I just couldn’t take it anymore and I had to get away before I lost it completely. Now usually, I wouldn’t recommend driving when you’re in this state of mind, but I couldn’t do anything else, and I knew that driving calmed me down, so I found my way back to the parking lot, got in my car and left. I drove and I drove and I drove, not really paying any attention to where I was or where I was going, and I surely wasn’t worried about how I was going to get back! Being that my comfort is found in my God and Savior, I had the radio turned on to a local contemporary Christian music station, and looking back on it, I’m not surprised that every song that played was about depending on God in the hard times. It was still fairly early in the day, and it was a typical day in the Virginia mountains in the spring, so there was plenty of daylight to be had. Liberty is located about half an hour or more from Appomattox, which is where a lot of the civil war was fought, so there are a great many old battle grounds, what better location for a drive at that point in my life. The scenery reminded me so much of my life and my heart at that time. I kept seeing trees that were falling apart and decaying and like old abandoned houses that are condemned and left to rot back into the earth. With all that I had been through in my life up to that point and all of the struggles that I was dealing with, my heart was left like those old battle fields, broken and decaying.

The entire time I was driving, I only made one turn. This turn led me to a historic village, the name slips my memory. I pulled over and parked my car there for a minute and just looked around. The sun had begun to set in the sky, so I sat there to watch God’s creation go to sleep for the night. With the way I was parked, the sun was setting behind this old village, all of the cabins and such looked so dreary. They all just looked so empty, like an old man sitting on a bench outside of the hospital after watching his lifelong sweetheart pass away. I begun to weep uncontrollably, feeling like my life was as one of those houses, so empty and alone, with no one to care for it.

After being parked there for a while, I put my car back into drive and just kept moving, I wasn’t ready to head back to the hustle and bustle of the nightlife of Liberty on a Sunday night. There was still a little bit of light left in the sky, but not much. Just enough light to where I could still see the wreckage of the old battle ground that I was driving through. It was at this point in my drive when “Letters from War” began weep its way through my speakers, the lyrics flowing through my car and into my wounded heart. I’d heard the song many times before but I’d never really paid it any attention. I’d always just looked it as another soldier tribute song. But in my broken state of mind that night, the song fell on new ears. I had the song on a CD in my car and after it went off, I pulled over and put it in and just listened to it over and over. I felt like the song had been written just for me. The lyrics to the song describe a son who has gone off to war and writes his mom every day. To every letter his mom replies, “you’re good, and you’re brave…make it home make it safe.” The second part tugs on the heartstrings with a letter sent to his mother from one of his comrades saying, “I was up on a hill, I was out there alone when the shots all rang out and bombs were exploding. And that’s when I saw him ge came back for me, and though he was captured a man set me free. And that man was your son, he asked me to write to you. I told him I would, oh I swore."

This was the last letter she received from her son. But she still kept writing him every day, saying, “you’re good and you’re brave…make it home make it safe.” I could see the mom as being God, our father, telling us "you're good, you’re brave..." When it got to that verse I just lost it completely. Tear spilled from my eyes like water spills from a broken cistern. It was at that point that it really hit me, that in the midst of all of EVERYTHING God never leaves us behind. I just started singing that to God, because when the world was full of sin and God knew we would never be good enough, he sent his Son down to us, and even though he had to be captured and even killed, he did it to set us free and all that he asked was for us to accept him and to give lives over to him, just like he gave us his.

By the last verse, I was so overwhelmed with emotion and didn’t think I could take anymore, but knowing what was coming, just thinking of it right now brings the tears back to my eyes. It speaks of a car pulling into her driveway, and her falling to her knees, sending images of a mother collapsing at the loss of her son into your eyes and the pain of loss piercing into your heart. The next line reads, “then out stepped a captain, where her boy used to stand, and says ‘Mom I’m following orders from all of your letters, and I’ve come home again.”

Even when we don’t really want him there, or we don’t think that we need him there, God's still standing there right behind us saying "your good, you’re brave…make it home make it safe” and when we finally make it back to him, it isn’t going to be him just seeing us and saying "hey you're here" he will RUN to us, and take us in his arms and just rejoice because we've finally made it back to him. There is a verse in Zephaniah located in Chapter 3, verse 17 which says, “The Lord your God is with you, He is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing” which really connects to this particular song for me.

The sun had completely set by this moment and the sky was lit by thousands of beautiful starts like glitter shimmering on a dark blue tapestry. I finally found the strength to turn my car back around and head home. I knew I needed that drive, it was exactly what I needed that day. Once I got away and got alone and put things into perspective, I couldn’t help but think, If GOD has my back, there's no way that I can’t make it. He makes EVERYTHING beautiful. I started thinking back over my previous semester, and every thing that I had gone through – the nightmares, the loss, having to move halls and get new roommates and prayer groups – but had that not happened, I would never have grown as much as I had. I learned to fight my way through hell, because I had to do it on my own. My friends did everything they could to help me, and were there for me through everything. And every night before I went to bed we would pray and my RAs and RD did the same, but when it came right down to it, it had to be ME who said, "I plead the blood of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Satan LEAVE ME ALONE." I had to be the one who, starting in my dreams, had to fight back, and not let that demon in my dreams win. And once I started to fight back and he could see that he wasn’t going to win, he had no choice but to leave me alone. Even though he may try to start again, he knows that I'm even stronger than I was, and that he is NOT going to have a hold on me, and that has PISSED HIM OFF like a bull at a rodeo. And when I was in that in that tank on February 18th getting washed in the water, he's going to be throwing a big hissy fit like a two year old who can’t have a cookie, but God is going to be up in heaven looking down on me saying, 'you're good, and you're brave..." and that is ALL that I need! And that's all I want.