Cole Ransom - Still I Rise

  They say you have to hit rock bottom to change. I used to think that was a death sentence. Now I know it’s where foundations get poured. When I lost everything—my pride, my job, my reputation, even my will to live—I didn’t feel strong. I felt stripped. Hollow. Like my whole life had been a mask, and now there was nothing left behind it but shame and silence. But funny thing about rock bottom? Ain’t no lower to fall. You stop scrambling. Stop pretending. And if you’re still breathing, you start building. You find out what you’re really made of—not the persona you wore, but the soul you buried. And you start laying bricks with bare hands and borrowed grace. I didn’t rise in a flash of light. I rose in inches. I rose in silence. I rose with shaky hands and ugly cries and cold coffee mornings where I scribbled half-prayers in a dollar store journal. And every inch of that rise was holy. So if you’re at the bottom right now, I won’t lie to you: It’s rough. I...

  Let’s just get this out of the way: You don’t have to clean yourself up for God to come close. I used to think I had to wash my hands before I could reach for Him. That if I wasn’t presentable—if I was angry, broken, hungover, or halfway honest—He’d turn His face away. I thought my mess would make Him leave. But I was wrong. Turns out, grace ain’t afraid of grime. I met God in the dirt. Not in the pews. Not in the polished testimony circles or altar calls. No, I met Him on the bathroom floor. In a jail cell. In a moment where I’d run out of lies and liquor, and all I had left was the breath I wasn’t even sure I deserved. And He didn’t flinch. He didn’t hand me a mop and say, “Clean this up first.” He sat with me. Quiet. Present. Unshocked. See, God doesn’t need you to fake it. He already knows where you are. He already saw the breakdown. The bottle. The betrayal. The ache you don’t talk about. The thing you swore you’d never do, and the thing you swore you’d ...