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Courage

A Life (Seemingly) In Ruins

by Mandie  •   Nov 21, 2010  •   24 Comments  •  
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I can smell the rain in the air.

These tired bones tell me that a storm is coming.

When you have been walking around in the desert you welcome the storm.

With the storm comes rain.

With the rain comes quenched thirst.

“I will break up your fallow ground.”

He speaks to me and knows that I am prone to panic; prone to wander; prone to doubt.

He sees me crying over my marriage and reminds me that love keeps no record of wrongs (yes, even that wrong).

He has promised to take care of me even in this.

He sees my mama heart breaking and fretting over how these four children are going to be provided for. Where will we live? Will paying work ever come?

“I will provide all of your needs…”

And He will.

He will.

It is far easier to keep your life to yourself, clutching it to your chest as if it were a hand of cards, than it is to be transparent with it.

It is hard to admit when we are in the desert (or a storm…or in a storm in the middle of desert).

But this…this is where God’s glory really shines.

This is where freedom comes.

God has not asked us to hold this life to our chest.

He has called us to lay all of our cards on the table and then when we’re done, to hold them very high up in the air.

When we become transparent, we also become vulnerable.

Vulnerability is not the enemy.

Vulnerability is good.

When we allow ourselves to become vulnerable, it kicks our pride out the window and makes room for Jesus to do His work in and through us.

There are events that take place in our lives that our minds cannot reconcile, leaving countless frayed ends within our heart that cannot make amends with our heads.

Yet still Jesus enters in, turning logic upside down and giving us beauty for our ashes.

In a world where entropy is woven throughout the very fabric of His creation, we are reminded again and again in the forms of poverty, war, famine, death and disease that this is not Eden.

Sin and death are among us…and yet this creation that His Word tells us is moaning and groaning for His return also has the echoes of an everlasting love that knows no boundaries that even the gates of Hell cannot hold back.

If we are quiet enough, we will hear the whispers of the Almighty reverberating all throughout creation saying, “My love is bigger than the sins of this world.”

When we truly grasp this (which I am desperately trying to do myself) there is nothing under the earth, over the earth, or in the earth that we need to fear.

We have nothing to hide anymore.

So maybe your past is full of stories that do not honor God. Maybe, like me, you are in a place where nothing is certain and you are staring at a life that seems to be shattering right before your eyes.

Maybe you are lying in a broken heap in the middle of your own personal desert where the Living Water of Christ has not yet reached you. May these words be like a beacon of light that point you in the direction of His love for you.

Let’s lay our tired, broken vessels at His feet.

He is there with us in the desert.

He is there with us during the storm.

We are not alone.

His peace is coming, ladies.

Rest in that.

By Mandie Oliver

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