So I have recently finished a book by Laura Story and its called "When God Doesn't Fix It"(She also sings "Blessings", look it up if you haven't heard it). It really opened my eyes to a lot of the things we face all through our lives that we tend to push to the bottom and try to just not look at. Our trials, our pain, our hurt....its all something we have, but sometimes its just that...too painful to bring up. We have to learn to look at those trials as blessings that draw us closer to God. I know with me I focus on just coasting through life without soaking up God like I should as long as things are going great and then WHAM, something stops me in my tracks and I'm left to do nothing but fall back on my knees at God's feet. I'm not saying that I don't kneel to God during good times, but I don't tend to cry out for his guidance quite as loud as when I'm hurting. This passage (2 Corinthians 12:6-9) is what I read last night and it 'stuck' with me.
Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.
9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. God tells Paul that he will not remove the thorn in Paul's side because His power is made great in weakness. WHAT?! Yep, think about telling all these people about Christ when you've had no trials.
All of us can relate more to pain than we do to everything being in good working order all the time. God takes our pain and makes it GREAT! He brings glory to Himself, yes, but he also heals us along the way if we lay it all at his feet. We seem to want everyone to think we have it all together but sometimes (most of the time), you can really help others by putting your story out there because somehow/somewhere, even if you never know it, someone will hear it that needed it. I have never felt closer to people that have seen/been through the trials that I have. No one's story is exactly like another person's but there is beauty in that also. I don't know about ya'll but that makes me feel all warm inside when I read/hear something that makes me feel like I'm not alone in this thing we call life.
God wants us to love one another and one of those ways is helping one another even if we think its still painful in the process. In all the times I've gotten the opportunity to share about Lawson or our fertility struggles, I have felt some of that load lifted and hopefully someone else was helped also. I may never know the amount of people that my story has reached, and I don't have to. Because God does, and if it brought him glory, then my job was worth it. If you had told me three years ago that Lawson's death would be a story for me to tell about God's glory, I would have been so mad. God changed those feelings and if He can do it for stubborn old me then He can for you too. I know there are people everywhere who have walked through much worse things than the things I have to lay at His feet, but it doesn't make my story less significant.
I am weak and I have never been more proud to be weak because He is made strong!
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