I had not planned on taking a 6 week hiatus from writing. I’ve had plenty to say, plenty of moments where I had thought of putting pen to paper but oddly I couldn’t wield myself to the task of writing. I’ve stayed in my head a lot. This usually isn’t great for me as an outward processor, and yet it’s where I’ve found myself living since January. A lot has changed and a lot has remained the same since we’ve returned from the DR last August.
Slowly we are pressing forward, making plans, and even beginning to dream again. We remember the Lord hasn’t forgotten us and though this last season has felt like a winter wandering we know the Lord is still guiding us even when it seems as if our path is dimly lit… it is indeed still lit.
I’ve been reading a lot lately- the Bible, my devotional, our Bible study book and a book on marriage, not to mention all the reading we do in Homeschool… I am constantly devouring information (whether I want to or not!) Our Bible Study is reading Uninvited by Lysa TerKeurst and a few nights ago a quote deep in Chapter 11 caught me so off guard. Its as if the Lord sent a message just to me that night…
“God wanted so much more from us. He didn’t bring us together (marriage) simply to build a life that would make us happy. He brought us together to be partners in the purpose He assigned. Our own strength would not have prepared us for Kingdom assignments. It would have crippled us…” And here’s where God gets me… “The breaking of us has actually been the making of us… the God-strengthened us he could use.”
And I remember all the breaking of the last several years. All the pain, all the burning down and tearing down of the old foundation, the ashes, only to find the remaking and the beauty in something completely new. Completely Holy. Completely from Him.
Oh the breaking and the remaking is hard and holy work that is not for the faint of heart. But we rise each day not on our own strength but on His alone who makes us stand, who holds us upright and when our sins and rough edges tumble out around us and spill into the lives of others he reminds us that we are still his, we are his beloved. He is not afraid of who we are.
Lysa went on to say on the next page “Hold fast to Jesus and remember: This breaking of you will be the remaking of you. A new you. A stronger you. Strengthened not with the pride of perfection but with the sweet grace of one who knows an intimate closeness with her Lord.”
The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.
Psalm 34:18
I’ve certainly felt the bone crushing pain of being brokenhearted in seasons where life just seems empty and barren, where the winter fields of my heart are painfully cold and it feels as if everything is slowly freezing and dying as I try to hold on to Jesus, but tonight I am deeply satisfied, not because I feel no more pain, or I’ve made it through a dark season and on the other side of it. No, on the contrary, I am not oblivious to my desert wandering soul or to the restlessness to be “remade” and not still in the “remaking” phase. I am deeply satisfied knowing that the holy choices and albeit really hard mistakes we have made He is using and bringing forth beautiful life from. There are new sprouts of life budding up through the ground in my heart and I am confident they will bloom in the Lord’s timing.
What has God been stirring in you? What new life is budding in the ground of your heart? Where do you see the remaking of something beautiful born out of the need to be broken of something?
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