"The Lord appeared to us in the past, saying: "I have loved you with an everlasting love, I have drawn you with loving kindness."
It's amazing to me how sometimes God uses so many different ways to share a message with me that I didn't even know that I was in need of until He begins to minister to those soft places of my heart and peels back another layer of the past that blocks me from serving Him with my whole heart. Sometimes we tend to bury things so deep in the recesses of our heart that we even forget that the scars and pains are still there ready to resurface and be dealt with on God's timing in our life.
This weekend I heard time and time again about the Father's love. I thought I was pretty well versed in that and I truly know without a doubt that I have a Heavenly Daddy who loves with a love that I can only begin to understand and share with others. His word is a wonderful love letter to me and to you. Sometimes when I sit down to read, there are moments that I feel like I've crawled up into my Daddy's lap as He reads to me. There is such comfort that. I never knew what that felt like in my relationship with my earthly father but I've seen many wonderful men, wonderful father's, take the time to scoop their little one up on their knee or nuzzled closely reading a story and sharing a tale. I often have envied that type of relationship, although I was blessed to have a mother who tried her best to fulfill that role for me.
For me an earthly father was never to be. I've never had a relationship with him and that had always left a void in my life. I must confess that I am grateful that my father chose not to be a part of my life and bring with him all the demons that he still battles today. There are sometimes blessings in the absence of those things that we think we need. My story is not unlike many that I talk to today whose father was not part of their life, but unique just the same. My mom was a young mother, just barely 17 years old when she had me. She wasn't ready to be a mom, but she did all she knew to do to try and be what I needed her to be. But my father was already a new daddy married to another woman but still playing the field. Not too long after my birth, he again became a father to a third child and eventually a fourth. Four children, four mothers and not able to be a father to any of them.
This bothered me for many years, knowing that my father couldn't be a dad to me and that I had three other siblings that I knew he had a relationship with but was causing chaos and destruction in all of their lives. As a young girl I thought I was missing out, but what I've learned over time is that I was being protected and guarded by my Heavenly Father. From before I was formed in a young mother's womb, my Heavenly Daddy was already planning my future and putting a hedge of protection around me. Oh my life wasn't easy and the enemy would have loved to have seen me buckle under the hardships that I had to go through but my Daddy He was holding me on his lap reading the story that was to be my life and saying "I have loved you with an everlasting love".
Some of you reading this today have had broken relationships or no relationships at all with your earthly fathers. Some of you still hold onto the pains of the void left by a man that was suppose to be there for you, loving you and supporting you. We can't undo the past and we can't make someone fulfill a role they don't know how to fill. The good news is that we all have a Heavenly father who loves us, cheers for us,cries with us and has never forsaken us. We never have to question who we are or where we belong because we are children of the King of Kings and there is nothing that will ever come between our daddy and us.
Are you holding onto pains of the void left by your father? Are you still angry for all the ways you felt he let you down? Are you willing to reach out your hand today and take the hand of your Heavenly Daddy and say, "read me a story about how you love me, how you know every detail about me, how you have my name written on the palm of your hand and have every hair on my head numbered." With that kind of a Daddy... we never need feel abandoned again.
Blessings,
Heather
Monday, August 22, 2011
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Scars; Psalm 34:18
"The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit."
I've been reading a wonderful book called "Your Scars Are Beautiful To God" by Sharon Jaynes. One of my favorite quotes from it is, "Scars do not simply represent healing or the end of a struggle, but the beginning of a ministry!" I read that over and over again spending time on what that meant to me and how often I've seen that applied.
We all have a past, some of us may have a past marred by many scars left by physical incidents, emotional turmoil and too often relationship strife and abuse. Regardless of the way the event happened, they've all left a scar on our being in some form or fashion... what we choose to do with that scar is up to us. I can see a physical scar on my body left by a time I ran into a gate and gashed my knee open and I can also see the scars left behind on my body due to surgeries that ultimately led to a greater scar of infertility and disappointment. Although the surgeons were wonderful at creating just a fine line from where they had me opened several times, the internal scars called endometriosis caused even greater scars leaving me unable to have children I so desperately wanted. My emotional being already scarred by losing my only child to cancer many years before, seemed to reopen and the wound grow that much deeper leaving me lost in my own despair and withdrawing from life.
Many of us women believe our womanhood is wrapped solely in the ability to reproduce and create future generations. Not all women are called to do so and that's not always an easy thing to hear. When God told me no, I became very angry with him and stopped being the woman he designed me to be. I felt empty and alone and that there wasn't anyone who could possibly understand the hurt that resided inside me. Loss became too familiar of a friend. I lost my only born child at the age of 3 1/2 years of age, I had two failed Invitro procedures where I lost three embryos each time and finally going through the entire adoption process and having the social worker present us with two beautiful little boys, ages 5 and 7 and having the whole thing fall apart and having to let them go.
I watched for nearly two years as my son battled bravely his fight against cancer and was there holding him on my lap as he breathed his last natural breath. I never got to hold the little ones that were growing inside my womb but felt their leaving my body in a very real way. I never got to even meet the two little boys who's stories were shared with me and pictures provided and even so, I had begun to love them anyway. I wasn't sure I'd survive the pain of it all and wanted so badly to give up, my spirit was crushed beyond what I thought was repairable... the scars seemed to be all that were left of me. But Jesus came just as he always does. He saw me lying curled up in a fetal position wishing life would end and wrapped himself around me and said, I know your pain and I will take it away and teach you how to love my children and be a mother in a way you never imagined just trust me and follow me. I put one foot on the floor and stood up before an actual cross and said ok, here I am. I never regretted that moment and although sometimes the ache inside comes back I trust in his word, "The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit."
My spirit was crushed and my heart broken but God continues to turn my scars into ministry by being the vessel of his unfailing love. You see our God, he lost a child too once. He had to watch as his only son hung dying on a cross for a people so undeserving, he sacrificed his son to cover our scars and allow us to be ministers to one another. God himself had to turn away as his son breathed his last breath and bore our sins that day. In that moment, a separation like this world had never known occurred and a great ministry was born out of the scars from that day. It was Jesus' scars that convinced the disciples that it was he standing before them.
Scars are our stories, reminders of who we were, where we've been and how we not only survived but how God turned them into something beautiful. The stories are to be told, the scars shared and a ministry birthed. What scars do you boldly show others in your ministry? What scar is God asking you to share and expose so that others can find healing? When are you going to allow your scars to turn to ministry?
Please listen to the words of this song by Jason Gray: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AapTMsc8A2Q&NR=1
Blessings,
Heather
I've been reading a wonderful book called "Your Scars Are Beautiful To God" by Sharon Jaynes. One of my favorite quotes from it is, "Scars do not simply represent healing or the end of a struggle, but the beginning of a ministry!" I read that over and over again spending time on what that meant to me and how often I've seen that applied.
We all have a past, some of us may have a past marred by many scars left by physical incidents, emotional turmoil and too often relationship strife and abuse. Regardless of the way the event happened, they've all left a scar on our being in some form or fashion... what we choose to do with that scar is up to us. I can see a physical scar on my body left by a time I ran into a gate and gashed my knee open and I can also see the scars left behind on my body due to surgeries that ultimately led to a greater scar of infertility and disappointment. Although the surgeons were wonderful at creating just a fine line from where they had me opened several times, the internal scars called endometriosis caused even greater scars leaving me unable to have children I so desperately wanted. My emotional being already scarred by losing my only child to cancer many years before, seemed to reopen and the wound grow that much deeper leaving me lost in my own despair and withdrawing from life.
Many of us women believe our womanhood is wrapped solely in the ability to reproduce and create future generations. Not all women are called to do so and that's not always an easy thing to hear. When God told me no, I became very angry with him and stopped being the woman he designed me to be. I felt empty and alone and that there wasn't anyone who could possibly understand the hurt that resided inside me. Loss became too familiar of a friend. I lost my only born child at the age of 3 1/2 years of age, I had two failed Invitro procedures where I lost three embryos each time and finally going through the entire adoption process and having the social worker present us with two beautiful little boys, ages 5 and 7 and having the whole thing fall apart and having to let them go.
I watched for nearly two years as my son battled bravely his fight against cancer and was there holding him on my lap as he breathed his last natural breath. I never got to hold the little ones that were growing inside my womb but felt their leaving my body in a very real way. I never got to even meet the two little boys who's stories were shared with me and pictures provided and even so, I had begun to love them anyway. I wasn't sure I'd survive the pain of it all and wanted so badly to give up, my spirit was crushed beyond what I thought was repairable... the scars seemed to be all that were left of me. But Jesus came just as he always does. He saw me lying curled up in a fetal position wishing life would end and wrapped himself around me and said, I know your pain and I will take it away and teach you how to love my children and be a mother in a way you never imagined just trust me and follow me. I put one foot on the floor and stood up before an actual cross and said ok, here I am. I never regretted that moment and although sometimes the ache inside comes back I trust in his word, "The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit."
My spirit was crushed and my heart broken but God continues to turn my scars into ministry by being the vessel of his unfailing love. You see our God, he lost a child too once. He had to watch as his only son hung dying on a cross for a people so undeserving, he sacrificed his son to cover our scars and allow us to be ministers to one another. God himself had to turn away as his son breathed his last breath and bore our sins that day. In that moment, a separation like this world had never known occurred and a great ministry was born out of the scars from that day. It was Jesus' scars that convinced the disciples that it was he standing before them.
Scars are our stories, reminders of who we were, where we've been and how we not only survived but how God turned them into something beautiful. The stories are to be told, the scars shared and a ministry birthed. What scars do you boldly show others in your ministry? What scar is God asking you to share and expose so that others can find healing? When are you going to allow your scars to turn to ministry?
Please listen to the words of this song by Jason Gray: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AapTMsc8A2Q&NR=1
Blessings,
Heather
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)