If you had stopped me in line at the store 266 days ago, I would not have believed the catastrophic breaking our family would experience. Honestly, focusing on what’s broken is easy. It’s easy to watch the physical, mental and emotional suffering that our family has experienced and only see the shattered pieces of lives left in ruin. It’s easy as tears are wiped from the eyes of our children to wonder how a good God could allow their hearts to be broken at such a young age; or when you’re holding the hand of your spouse and tears are streaming down his face from such excruciating pain and uncontrollable vomiting, gasping for each breath as every monitor in his room alarms, to question whether the breaking of him will ever end.
There is not a piece of our lives that has remained intact from the trauma we have walked through over the past few years.
And yet, over and over again, God has blessed us in the breaking.
Just as every aspect of our lives has been broken in some way, every aspect of our lives has been touched by a kind & loving God. While not every day has been easy or felt kind, God has ALWAYS been there with us. The blessings have come from messages of encouragement, lyrics of love, acts of service, healing in broken relationships, images of Jesus kneeling next to Chris, financial blessings and more.
Every time we lift our eyes off of our situation and look up, His spirit is there to give us what we need in that moment. Through this journey God has become the lifeline for our family I can’t imagine ever going back to the days when He was an afterthought or a ‘nice to do’ when it was convenient.
I’ve realized that God’s desire is for me to always know how desperately I need Him especially when life is going well as much as I know it now. Seeing blessings IN the devastation isn’t easy. It’s a choice. It’s hard most days, but never in the Bible did God promise easy days. As I recount the blessings of the past 265 days while I await the results of Chris’s 6th ERCP, I find myself wanting for others to have their eyes opened to the goodness and bigness of God as He has begun to open mine. While I know I have so much to learn about His character, I’m grateful that He chose to spend this breaking season blessing me with the gift of knowing Him more fully.
I don’t know when Chris will come home and what his limitations will be, but I do know that God has a good plan for our lives and will use ALL of this-each tear, each broken piece-for an eternal masterpiece for His glorious kingdom. I want to encourage you to trust God in your broken places to bless each piece. On the hard days, the really painful days, lift your eyes and trust Him to meet you right where you are. There really are blessings to be found in the breaking.