GRACEFULLY BROKEN!
I was in Dollarama last night and there was a lady and two kids behind me in the LONG line. One was a big kid, one was a toddler. The bigger one had a pack of glow sticks and the baby was screaming for them so the Mom opened the pack and gave him one, which stopped his tears. He walked around with it smiling, but then the bigger boy took it and the baby started screaming again. Just as the Mom was about to fuss at the older child, he bent the glow sticks and handed it back to the baby. As we walked outside at the same time, the baby noticed that the stick was now glowing and his brother said "I had to break it so you could get the full effect from it." I almost ran because l could hear God saying to me, "I had to break you to show you why I created you. You had to go through it so you could fulfill your purpose." That little baby was happy just swinging that "unbroken" glow stick around in the air because he didn't understand what it was created to do which was "GLOW". There are some people who will be content just "being" but some of us that God has chosen, we have to be "BROKEN". We have to get sick. We have to lose a job. We go through a divorce. We have to go through so call friends talking behind our backs, people who try to break your character all while smiling in your face, but GOD! When we have to bury our siblings, parents, best friend, or our child because, in those moments of desperation, God is breaking us but when the breaking is done, then we will be able to see the reason for which we were created.. so when you see us glowing just know that we have been broken but healed by his Grace and Mercy!!!
Sometimes we are totally happy on our journey through life, totally unaware that we aren’t living our best life and that there’s so much more we could be doing. We’re happy carrying around our unbroken glow stick and think we’ve got this perfect life, that we’re right where we need to be. And then our life’s rug gets ripped out from under us. We lose a loved one. We or someone close to us gets seriously ill. We lose a job. We get divorced. Our house burns down. We get in a car accident…. The list could go on and on. Suddenly we are just broken beyond anything we can comprehend and we don’t know how to put ourselves back together. We can try on our own to get through it, and those without faith might appear to have done that. But my feeling is that it’s God who puts us back on the right track. As my friend said, you can almost hear God saying, ‘I had to break you to show you why I created you. You had to go through it so you could fulfill your purpose’. It’s awful and it hurts but she’s right. When the breaking is done, then we will be able to see the reason we were created. When the breaking is done, we can see the purpose that was to come from it, the purpose God has for us.
Today I was struck again but this same idea as I read one of my devotions and amazed at God’s impeccable timing.
Isaiah lists powerful ways that the Lord will bring hope and healing to us. Which have you personally experienced?
This was part of the scripture they referenced....
He has sent me to tell those who mourn that the time of the Lord ’s favor has come, and with it, the day of God’s anger against their enemies. To all who mourn in Israel, he will give a crown of beauty for ashes, a joyous blessing instead of mourning, festive praise instead of despair. In their righteousness, they will be like great oaks that the Lord has planted for his own glory.
Isaiah 61:2-3 NLT
In this week of memories, of reflection on the time where my mourning began, where I began to learn about the hardest kind of grief and from there learned about the best kind of hope... yes, definitely God's impeccable timing for this devotion. There were other powerful ways that Isaiah listed as ways God would bring healing and hope but there is no way more powerful than what I’ve learned through mourning, through loss, through the brokenness of losing a child. For all who mourn, he will give a crown of ashes, a joyous blessing, praise instead of despair. I had to be broken to find this hope but wow what a hope it has been and continues to be.
Today marks the anniversary of my final day of innocence, of naivety, of carrying my unbroken glow stick and not knowing that I could not get the full effect of my life and my purpose, I could not find my hope, without being broken and without knowing loss, grief and mourning.
Today I celebrate my glow stick that shines bright, broken, with the full effect!
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