Shattered

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A friend shared with me recently a song about being shattered (you can listen to it here).  This song really spoke to my heart and I started thinking about how many days in this current season, I do feel like my life is shattered in pieces on the floor.  Life isn't turning out how I pictured it.  The painting I had painted in my mind is not my reality yet those shattered pieces on the floor aren't a picture of hopelessness - yet a picture of HOPE.  God is going to bring life back to those broken places.  He is going to use them to create a new picture, one far beyond something I could have ever imagined.  Oh, the beauty he is going to create, I just know it.  

I have to give up control, release my "paintbrush", open my hands up and allow God to create the masterpiece He needs.  Although those shattered pieces hurt, if the pain is enough to help someone; it's worth it.  

God is going to use these broken pieces to paint a beautiful picture full of His glory that points back to Him.  

Living and Not Just Existing

Sometimes life can feel like one big storm where the waves just flop you back-and-forth and you feel you can’t even stand because the current is so strong and the waters are so deep.  You just go with the flow being knocked all around, treading water and trying not to drown.  Feeling like you have no control over what’s going on in your life.

Recently, Hurricane Florence came through our town.  She battered our area with wind and more rain than I've ever seen in my entire life.  Walking outside a few days after the storm passed, I noticed these flowers...

You can tell where during the storm the wind blew for hours, trying to knock them over and destroy them.  They were battered and bruised but you know what else I saw that day?  

Life.  

They were LIVING and not just existing...called to bloom and flourish and live the life they were created for.  No, they weren't standing perfectly straight as they were a few days ago but they were still standing.  Even in the midst of the imperfection, they are still beautiful.    

So on those days that I feel bruised and beaten and barely able to keep my head above water, I will remember these flowers. It's a visual reminder that the God I serve, can calm the storms and that I wasn't put here to simply exist but to LIVE a life of abundance (John 10:10)....even if I'm a little tattered and torn - I can still bloom, and you can too!