God is using all of your experiences, both good and bad, to develop your character to match your calling.
And the gaping hole left behind is in some ways worse than death. If their absence was caused by death, you would grieve their loss. But when their absence is caused by rejection, you not only grieve their loss but you also have to wrestle through the fact that they wanted this.
My ability to heal cannot be conditional on them wanting my forgiveness but only on my willingness to give it.
Hope is the melody of the future. Faith is dancing to that melody right now.
Bitterness isn’t usually found most deeply in those whose hearts are hard but rather in those who are most tender. It’s not that they are cold; it’s that they’ve been made to feel unsafe.
And we’d both agree this isn’t how it should be. This life between two gardens is confusing and complicated. Dust is messy. We don’t even like to touch dust, especially if it’s made up of the shattered pieces of our own hearts.
My ability to heal cannot depend on anyone’s choices but my own.
I admit that so often I have held tightly to my own plans and to the outcomes that I think should come to pass. But I know the story You’re writing for me is so much better than any story I could ever write for myself. Help me to cling to this truth when my circumstances are uncertain and unpredictable. I declare my trust in You above it all. In Jesus’ name, amen.
To deny my feelings any voice is to rob me of being human. But to let my feelings be the only voice will rob my soul of healing perspectives with which God wants to comfort me and carry me forward.
Why did this happen? Because there’s someone else in the world who would drown in their own tears if not for seeing yours.
Staying here, blaming them, and forever defining your life by what they did will only increase the pain. Worse, it will keep projecting out onto others. The more our pain consumes us, the more it will control us. And sadly, it’s those who least deserve to be hurt whom our unresolved pain will hurt the most.
It is necessary for you not to let pain rewrite your memories. And it’s absolutely necessary not to let pain ruin your future.
You will hear human answers that try to tie bows around the big blows of life. These sound good in a sermon but never hold up in real life. And that’s when you will see what a gift it is that you’ve been entrusted with enough hurt to keep you humane. You’ll offer the only real answer available: ‘The Lord helped me survive and He’ll help you too. I’ll hold your hand while you find your way to Him.
Perfection intimidates. Compassion inspires. And in that you will finally find the why. Why did this happen? Because there’s someone else in the world who would drown in their own tears if not for seeing yours. And when you make one other human simply see they aren’t alone, you make the world a better place.
God is who He says He is, and He will do what He says He will do. But to partner with Him in His work of transformation in our lives, we must seek Him with all our hearts. It’s our choice whether we stay stuck in our hurt or get renewed in our hearts.
Relationships were reduced to attempts at managing what I feared about them rather than enjoying what I loved about them.
Forgiveness is the weapon. Our choices moving forward are the battlefield. Moving on is the journey.
If we are going to be true to ourselves, we’d better make sure we are being true to our most surrendered, healed, and healthy selves, the ones God made us to be.
We can’t live in an alternate reality and expect what’s right in front of us to get better.
I came across a quote from the book Art and Fear that says it best: “Making art provides uncomfortably accurate feedback about the gap that inevitably exists between what you intended to do, and what you did.”3 And the gap never stays silent.
Cynicism dressed like a security guard, making me believe that if I hoped for less, it would protect me and prevent more pain.