Some time ago, I went through a real rough patch. (Shocker right?) I was in this awkward season where I was trying to live the life I THOUGHT the Lord had set out for me instead of what He actually HAD set out for me. During this confusion, I clearly heard the Lord asking me to let go of someone who was important to me, one of my best friends at the time. I couldn’t figure out why the Lord was asking me to slam the door in the face of someone who had only been kind and caring towards me. It even sounded harsh and cruel, yet loud and clear the Lord was asking me for my full obedience.
The evening I shut that door, I remember sitting on the floor between two pews in a church looking at my imaginary heart in front of me shattered on the ground and thinking “Welp, you got what you wanted Lord. What now? ” My prayer that night was that God would show me the meaning of what had just happened and why it was so painful. That He would in His timing show me the beauty in that brokenness. However, first He needed me to feel the crippling pain of being broken. Experiencing the depth of crushed dreams was a necessary part of giving Him complete control of my life.
I would probably consider that night and the days to follow some of the hardest of my life. Not because of what I lost, but because of what I felt.
However, that night I started to live a life this dreamer only dreamed about living. Through the next year the Lord revealed to me just how poor in Spirit I was, and that life was so much more than what was in front of my eyes. Soon enough, that same previous pain became the glue that started to piece my broken heart back together in a new way. Making it look much different than what it had looked like before.
This month I see the fruits of that pain. I see the fruits of it when I walk these beautiful dusty streets. I feel its joy in a moment of dancing. Had it not been for that evening, I would have never felt the need to find myself apart from the idea of what I thought was supposed happen. I never would have decided to pursue the dream, rather than dream the dream and pursue something outside of who I truly was. The Lord is pressing upon me to define myself upon Him rather than in other people. He is also showing me the world He created and not the world my eyes want to see.
And the fruit of that previous pain is what? It is this. That after a lot of cutting, sewing and mending, here in Malawi, I am standing. Stronger than I ever was before. I am surrounded by extreme brokenness, and yet, the legs that I stand on are strengthened byonly the Lord. My previously broken heart is now stitched up better than it ever was when it was whole. For the scars that are carved within it are reminders that I now live in pursuit of a happiness based on the kingdom not by my own definition. And it is through those very scars that light is able to shine, brighter than it ever has before.
