I have encountered a lot of hurdles over the years, taken plenty of face-plants. Thing is, I have seen lives changed when I share those bruises with honesty and transparency. My own life has been changed when others do the same. These life transformations, these opportunties to see freedom wash over a once-ashamed face make the hard stuff seem like blessings in retrospect.
In those moments, I am filled with gratitude and amazement toward a God who can take a messy life and make it into something beautiful. I find myself proclaiming with great joy, "He redeems all things!" Our God indeed makes all things new. And so I have often told him to do as he wishes with me. If he is most glorified through a life of hardship, then let it come.
Me and my big mouth. I am in the midst of one of the most difficult spiritual battles I have ever faced. It reeks of opportunities for anger and shame, bitterness and rejection. It is exhausting and overwhelming. The rubber has met the road, and the...well, something has definitely hit the fan. Will I stand by my words? Will I choose to believe that I will be made more beautiful by struggling with integrity than I could be any other way? Will I really take whatever he gives, with a face set like flint toward his glory?
I want a legacy that is marked by raising a banner of freedom from shame, that proclaims a God who makes all things new- even the hardest, unspoken things. It seems that such a legacy might necesitate my own battles with the hard and unspoken places of the heart. At the moment, it has the bitter taste of humble pie. But with a willing heart- with that face set like flint toward his glory- I imagine the flavor will become something more akin to the lavish banquet of his love.
He redeems all things. It may mean face-plants, but I want to be a part of that. So let it come.
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