REDEMPTION UNVEILED
Beauty from Ashes- A Redemption Story
“Well… our house is on fire.”
Carter isn’t one for jokes and the statement seemed surprisingly calm. Too calm.
I heard him clearly, but still felt puzzled.
Instinctively I replied, “What? What did you say?”
“Our house is on fire.”
Again calm, but a bit shakier. He didn’t have to explain. Somewhere in my gut I just knew… it was serious.
“Did you call 911?”
“Yes.”
“I’m coming.”...
This is a post that I wrote in 2016 after our house caught on fire. It is a beautiful thing to look back and see what God did through all of this horrible experience.
“Well… our house is on fire.”
Carter isn’t one for jokes and the statement seemed surprisingly calm. Too calm.
I heard him clearly, but still felt puzzled. Instinctively I replied,
“What? What did you say?”
“Our house is on fire.”
Again calm, but a bit shakier. He didn’t have to explain. Somewhere in my gut I just knew… it was serious.
“Did you call 911?”
“Yes.” He stated.
“I’m coming.”
I was in my brother’s bathroom trying on some jeans at a rummage sale. It had been an uneventful day… until now. I ran outside and told my brother “I need you to drive me home. Now. Our house is on fire.”
It took me less than a minute to be on my way. As we drove on the back country road I saw the fire trucks a couple of miles behind. It was then that I realized we would beat them to our house. I couldn’t help but wonder what I was going to see when I arrived.
My thoughts were interrupted by my brother’s statement,
“Oh shit.”
I looked up and saw it…
The smoke.
It was a lot of smoke.
I had seen this sight a hundred times before, a pillar of smoke in the distance. I can never help but wonder what is causing it. I didn’t wonder this time.
I knew.
This was my house.
This was the house that we bought only five months ago.
This was the house that I had spent every weekend and many weeknights of the past 20 weeks working on. This was the house that we had just painted… and trimmed… and replaced doors… countertops… fans… lighting… and flooring. I had finally chosen my curtains and bedding and was finalizing room décor. This was our fixer-upper… that we were almost done with.
As soon as I saw the smoke, I put my face in my hands and began to sob.
How can this be happening?
This can’t be happening.
But it was.
As we arrived at our home I saw my husband and three sweet babies in our front yard watching our house burn. The flames were pouring out of our children’s playroom.
As my brother pulled into our front yard, I opened my door and had my foot on the ground before the truck had even stopped.
My babies. I needed to hold my babies.
I ran up to them, hugged them, and thanked God for their safety.
The firefighters pulled in and we said a quick prayer for them as they began to work. We watched as they quickly got the flames under control and made sure the fire was extinguished. It all happened so fast and quickly it was over.
The fire was out.
I had never been in a house that had been on fire before. From the outside, I thought the loss would be isolated to one room... but I was wrong. I have heard the term “smoke damage”, but could not have imagined the extent of destruction it caused so quickly.
Our house was destroyed.
As I walked through the house, I couldn’t even process what I saw. There is no way this could be my house. My house was filled with natural light, light-colored walls, and white trim.
It was like I had walked into a nightmare version of my home.
Our normally bright house was a pit of darkness. Even with a flashlight, I could hardly see. The air burned my throat and I had to leave after only a few minutes inside.
We all stood around for a bit and talked about how thankful we were that everyone was safe and how we all knew everything would work out.
Then one by one everyone said their goodbyes and wished us the best.
Carter and I didn’t know what to do.
What are you supposed to do?
So we just sat in our front yard on a stump, baffled, at what had just happened.
What had just happened?
This fire had just demolished the last five months of our lives. And we weren’t just starting over, we were starting farther back than ever before.
How did we get here? We have never been those people that wanted a “fixer-upper”; in fact, because of our lack of skills we tried to avoid it. But after two years of looking, we decided this house had the greatest potential to give us what we dreamed of.
We bought our house hoping we could handle the adventure of a remodel. We had almost done it. It was far from perfect, but we were proud of it. We were proud of it because we had put so much time and effort into it. Of course we still had a ton of projects to do, but we had our final *big* project scheduled for the following week.
We have never worked so hard on anything.
All of our hard work was wiped away in about 20 minutes.
...
The next morning, I was lying in bed and a scripture I grew up hearing came to my mind.
“To give them beauty for ashes…”
I have always loved the sound of these words. Very poetic and they paint a beautiful picture of the redemptive process. It got me thinking… redemption is beautiful, but to be truthful, the process of bringing beauty out of ashes is not easy.
I find myself today with a giant opportunity, I get to bring beauty from ashes… literally.
This process will not just happen. It will cost me. I have had, and will continue to have, many opportunities to not bring beauty from this situation.
I can choose not to make the most of it.
But I won’t.
I will not allow this situation to steal any more from me than it already has
I am headed to Redemption.
I do not worry about the destination, but the journey overwhelms me at times. I know how costly it is to go on this journey. It is not fun, but it is worth it. Even though I would not have chosen this. I can do this.
I will do this.
I will release my expectations.
I will stand on my faith.
I will hold on to my hope.
And I will choose to love.
And then I will wait. I will wait and watch it all unfold.
Beauty is coming.
Just wait and see.
Do you know of anyone who is also in an overwhelming time of their life? Forward this to them and let us make beauty together!
Get A Vision for Your Life
It has become obvious to me that if we want to take the Adventure God has for us then we need to have some sort of idea where we are headed.
You need a vision for your life.
ASAP.
There truly is no need to wait any longer. You need to identify where you are going and what you are doing with the time you have on this Earth.
I think as Christians we struggle with living a broad approach to life. We are taught what our morals should be and then we just live. However, I would like to challenge this approach. I think we can do better. I think we should do better.
I wish that every single Christian could realize the vital importance of identifying where they believe God is calling them in this life and live very intentionally to get there. Not rushing ahead of God but being very aware of the great responsibility we have to take our time seriously.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not here to tell you to cause you to panic about your Christianity. That’s not my job.
My job is to encourage you to show up for the grand Adventure God created you for so that you don’t go to bed feeling like something is missing. I want to help you organize your life so that you don’t end up disappointed with your time on this earth.
So, first things first. Get a vision.
I want you for a second to think about being 90 years old. Perhaps you know that your life is nearing its end. What would it take for you to feel like you succeeded with the time you had?
What do you want to accomplish?
Who do you want to become?
What do you want your life with God to look like?
Now write the answers to your questions down. Write it anywhere you want, but then put it somewhere for you to look at… often!
We are all busy & it is easy to get distracted by the busyness of life and end up forgetting about our priorities. The answers that you have to these questions should be of the utmost importance for you to accomplish. When you look at your week right now, do you feel like you are sticking consistently with the priorities you have defined?
As humans, we have this bizarre way of thinking about our future selves as someone we will one day magically become or perhaps I should say, we think of our future life as something that will magically happen… but that’s not how it works.
You must build the life you are called to build. It isn’t going to just happen. It is you who must partner with God on this Earth to respond to the call He has put within you. It will take time. It will take sacrifice. It will take obedience. It will take failure. It will take persistence.
Creating the life you were born to create will without a doubt be the hardest thing you do… and it will be the one thing that is most worth doing.
God created you for a purpose. He put a plan in place for your life. This plan will not be forced upon you. It will be your job to fight to understand it, work to uncover it, and put the time into creating it.
Step 1. Create clarity by getting a vision of where you want to end up.
If you don’t have clarity, now is the time.
And don’t forget, the Earth is waiting for you to show up.
Want to go deeper? Listen to the podcast episode here:
Why Doesn't God Care?
There I was with a long list of prayer request, praying to a God who didn’t seem to be listening. I had made it very clear the things I needed him to do for me and they were all really good things. I couldn’t understand why He wouldn’t work in my life.
Did He not care?
Of course, I had problems before this, but this was the first time I felt overwhelmingly surrounded by negative circumstances and could not see a way out.
During this time, I found myself getting back into my pajamas in the middle of the day, crawling into bed and crying, as I prayed to a God who seemed determined to stay silent.
I was full of anxiety and was deeply discouraged.
Until…
There I was with a long list of prayer requests, praying to a God who didn’t seem to be listening. I had made it very clear the things I needed him to do for me and they were all really good things. I couldn’t understand why He wouldn’t work in my life.
Did He not care?
Of course, I had problems before this, but this was the first time I felt overwhelmingly surrounded by negative circumstances and could not see a way out.
During this time, I found myself getting back into my pajamas in the middle of the day, crawling into bed and crying, as I prayed to a God who seemed determined to stay silent.
I was full of anxiety and was deeply discouraged.
Until…
One day, I was reading my Bible and came across a scripture in Romans that stopped me in my tracks.
And changed everything.
“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.”
Wait.
These words hit me like a ton of bricks.
My present sufferings are somehow connected to my glory? But how? How in the world is suffering needed for glory? Isn’t suffering the opposite of glory?
The next sentence blew me away…
“For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.”
What in the world??
I was shocked to read suffering had any connection to glory and now this scripture was saying somehow creation itself was invested in this process? Creation was waiting… for me? What did all of this mean? I didn’t know, but I was determined to dive in deeper.
I realized I needed to figure out what the connection was between suffering and glory because this made no sense to me.
I decided I was all in.
“Luckily”, I found myself in a season of suffering and decided to use this time to learn. I dedicated myself and I promised to give it all the time it took. (Spoiler alert: It took years.)
For the first time in my life, I wasn’t trying to get out of my pain. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t looking to blame someone for my circumstances. For the first time in my life, I chose to be still in the darkness.
This process of discovery took me years to go through. There was no magic that made my life all come together. Many of my circumstances stayed the same and the things I prayed continually went unanswered. I experienced so much anxiety and exhaustion. I often felt like I was being squeezed and could hardly breathe.
I didn’t feel strong because I wasn’t. I was more weak and broken than I had ever been in my entire life.
And it was there, in my brokenness, I found my strength.
It was only in my suffering that I came face to face with my greatest fears and I was presented with my worst nightmares.
It was then that I finally saw myself for who I really was.
I learned I had been living with a deep need to feel in control of my life and keep things in order. I began to understand I had a lot of fear about my life not going how I expected it to go.
I never realized until this how much anxiety I had about my relationships.
I discovered I was leaning on my husband too much to give me confidence. I uncovered I had a fear of making a wrong financial decision and hurting my family. I realized I was afraid I was going to fail my friends and they would leave me. I recognized I loved to judge people who disappointed or hurt me and blame them for any of my unkind actions. I came to the realization that I had a deep fear of being misunderstood which was keeping me limited. I learned I was afraid I was going to make a mistake in raising my kids. Actually, I was afraid to make any mistakes at all.
I knew I was not perfect but to be honest I had no idea I was this broken. I had never seen these things within myself because I had never let myself see them.
It was very difficult to realize I wasn't the person I thought I was.
Before this, I was so determined to be the “best me” I had never learned to stop and look in the mirror to see the person I actually was. I kept thinking I simply needed to try harder so all of the bad parts of myself would go away.
When I first read those words they made no sense to me, now it seems so clear. It was only when I stopped avoiding from my problems I realized how helpful they could be for me.
Most of us spend our lives trying to avoid suffering and praying our way out of hard things.
We have no idea that this lifestyle is keeping us from becoming the great person we always hoped we would be. We only see our problems as a hinderance to our life, not the key to life itself.
many Of us feel betrayed by God because he won’t remove our suffering. I wonder if God ever feels betrayed by us because we won’t choose to Heal and become the person he created us to be.
After almost a decade on this journey, I am convinced, God wants us to be free. More than anything he wants to heal us, equip us, and launch us into our destiny. Unfortunately, we are obsessed with how we feel and our healing involves a lot of pain.
Creation is waiting for a group of people who have stood the test of their suffering and have risen out of the ashes stronger than before.
This group of people is no longer driven by their fears because they have faced them in the darkness. These people are no longer seeking to feel important because they know they are. These people are no longer slaves to their emotions and often choose to do things they don’t feel like doing. They are no longer looking to get out of hard situations because they know great things will come from it.
They know their God hasn’t betrayed them because He is the one who healed them.
You see, our suffering is not the problem, our suffering holds the keys to the solution. We must not run from it, we must experience it so we can heal.
Creation is waiting for you to be revealed.
Are you coming?
Feeling Betrayed by God
I will never forget the very first time that I felt betrayed by God. I was twenty-two years old and something very bad happened to someone I love. Up to this point in my life, God had been a very dependable God for me.
I had heard other people talk about being betrayed by God, but not me. I had known and worshiped him since the beginning of my life and I never knew him as anything but a kind, trustworthy, reliable God. I had no reason to doubt him, but that changed in the spring of 2009.
This situation brought me to not only question God but also to feel angry with him.
I felt betrayed.
I was twenty-two years old the first time that I felt betrayed by God. Up until that point, I had heard other people talk about being betrayed by Him, but not me. I had known and worshiped my God since the beginning of my life and I never knew him to be anything but kind, trustworthy, and reliable. I had no reason to doubt him, but that changed in the spring of 2009 when something very bad happened to someone I love.
During this time, I remember being at my parents’ house, listening to a Christian teacher that had come into town. She was teaching on the faithfulness and goodness of God. I will never forget sitting in the corner, tears in my eyes, unable to listen to her fully because I was completely entangled in my anger. Sure, a couple of weeks before I would’ve wholeheartedly agreed with everything she said, but not now. I couldn’t.
God had always been my safe place of refuge and now he felt like my ultimate betrayer. I wasn’t sure what our future together would hold and I was in shock.
I felt like a fool.
I felt betrayed.
I was filled with questions and wanted answers. I began to have some pretty blunt words with God about what in the world He was doing up there on that throne of His.
Through the following weeks, months, and years, I have found answers to my questions. Surprisingly, as I sought to hold God accountable, I found that my beliefs turned out to be partially to blame for my feelings of being betrayed.
Here are five misunderstandings that led me to blame my heartache on God.
1- I had a misunderstanding of pain.
Pain used to be my enemy. I constantly tried to avoid it. I had actually dedicated pain as something evil because I hated it so much.
What if I had it all wrong? What if this life wasn’t about avoiding pain?
There can be such purpose in our pain.
Our pain allows us to grow. Our pain offers us an opportunity to change. Our pain allows us to fight for what we believe. Our pain allows us to see inaccurate beliefs that we have about our self, others, or our God.
God does not mind pain. I do not believe that He enjoys watching people suffer, but He does understand that sometimes to experience great healing it will feel like great pain.
If we want to live our life to the fullest, we must understand that some pain has a purpose. We must not run from our pain. We must face it and process it until it doesn’t have power anymore.
2- I believed that God could/should control people.
God loves free will. Free will means that there will be situations where people make the wrong choice. Sometimes knowingly, sometimes mistakenly, and sometimes because they choose evil.
God does not control me. God doesn’t control you.
I am given the opportunity to have him a part of my life or I can choose not to. I am not forced onto the path that He desires me to take and no one else is either.
To give God credit for the bad things that people do is utterly unfair.
3- I didn’t think I should have to go through hardship.
Truth is, I trusted him to keep me safe. I trusted him to keep them safe. That was the deal, right? I worship God and He offers me some level of protection from the bad things in this life, right? That was the agreement?
Or not?
Simply put, I had a warped view that my faith would protect me from difficulty.
My faith was never designed to remove difficulty from my life. My faith was designed to equip me to flourish during difficulty.
If we believe that our faith is supposed to make us invisible to hardship, we will never enter into the battles that we were designed to conquer. Don’t avoid hardship. Avoiding hardship will steal so much from us because there is much hardship on the path to victory.
4- I didn’t understand God’s love.
This was the biggest lesson that I learned. God loves me and God loves each person that was involved in my betrayal. There is no exception to this. There is nothing that can be done to remove his love.
God loves.
Period.
I know this sounds like a really great thing, but to be honest, this was hard for me. I was always taught that God loves us unconditionally; however, deep down, I felt like He loved those who obeyed him more.
I had to learn how to respect the fact that God loves the people that hurt me and that God gives grace to the people who betray me. This was a long journey for me, but ultimately one of the best lessons of my life.
5- I did not understand God’s ability to redeem.
Because I had never endured such betrayal, I didn’t understand God’s redemption. I did not know that God can heal all things. I didn’t understand that He can actually bring me and everyone involved to complete healing and NOT just as we were before, but even better!
Our God is the greatest writer of success stories. No matter what despair has come our way, God has a path to heal it all.
The greatest sorrow gives way for the best redemption.
It took some time to get answers to all of my questions, but after it was all over I had learned a lot.
Life is hard. Situations can be utterly disappointing and heartbreaking. People will fail us.
But through it all, God is good.
Without Love...
Love isn't always hard. But, often times, it is. It can be hard to love our spouses, our friends, our families, our homes, our jobs... or our lives.
I have yet to meet a "lover" who has not also experienced the painful kiss of disappointment, betrayal, and heartache.
When we love, we will inevitably experience disappointment and feel pain. We can slowly determine that the cost of love is too high because it hurts so much. Through the many disappointments that we experience it is easy to choose to love less.
Despite all of my experiences that have taught me that love is quite costly, I have determined that the cost of not loving is far greater.
To lose my love is to lose my life...
Love is hard.
Sure, there are times that love is easy.
Falling in love is easy. It is easy to love our children. And puppies. Puppies are easy to love. (If you aren't trying to train them! Haha.)
So, love isn't always hard. But, often times, it is. It can be hard to love our spouses, our friends, our families, our homes, our jobs... or our lives.
I have yet to meet a "lover" who has not also experienced the painful kiss of disappointment, betrayal, and heartache.
When we love, we will inevitably experience disappointment and feel pain. We can slowly determine that the cost of love is too high because it hurts so much. Through the many disappointments that we experience it is easy to choose to love less.
Despite all of my experiences that have taught me that love is quite costly, I have determined that the cost of not loving is far greater.
To lose my love is to lose my life.
Love is hard, but we must continue to choose love no matter how difficult it may be.
We can discover all of the mysteries on this earth, but if we don’t’ find love, we will still be lost.
We could find a family for every child in need of one, but if they are not shown love, there is no point.
We can possess all of the intellect of this world, but without love, it will lead us to isolation.
We can teach our children all of the lessons of life, but if they never learn that they are loved, then we have failed.
We could feed every starving person on this earth, but if they have not been treated with love, they will still be in need.
We can be on the “right” side of every argument, but if we can’t love the person on the other side, what does that say about us?
We can possess all of the power in the world, but without love, we cannot be trusted with it.
We can be married for the rest of our lives, but if it is void of love, it will be far from a fairy tale.
We can earn freedom for the entire world, but if there is no love, we will be enslaved by our hate.
We can have everything that money can buy, but without love, we will still be poor.
We can speak with beautifully eloquent words, but if they are not followed with love, our words will produce hate.
It is vital that we find a way to put love at the center of our cause, no matter what that may be.
Because without love my friends, we have nothing.
DON'T FORGET TO SUBSCRIBE TO OUR E-MAIL LIST, SO YOU NEVER MISS A POST FROM REDEMPTION UNVEILED!
Beauty from Ashes
“Well… our house is on fire.”
Carter isn’t one for jokes and the statement seemed surprisingly calm. Too calm.
I heard him clearly, but still felt puzzled.
Instinctively I replied, “What? What did you say?”
“Our house is on fire.”
Again calm, but a bit shakier. He didn’t have to explain. Somewhere in my gut I just knew… it was serious.
“Did you call 911?”
“Yes.”
“I’m coming.”...
“Well… our house is on fire.”
Carter isn’t one for jokes and the statement seemed surprisingly calm. Too calm.
I heard him clearly, but still felt puzzled. Instinctively I replied,
“What? What did you say?”
“Our house is on fire.”
Again calm, but a bit shakier. He didn’t have to explain. Somewhere in my gut I just knew… it was serious.
“Did you call 911?”
“Yes.” He stated.
“I’m coming.”
I was in my brothers’ bathroom trying on some jeans at a rummage sale. It had been an uneventful day… until now.
I ran outside and told my brother “I need you to drive me home. Now. Our house is on fire.”
It took me less than a minute to be on my way. As we drove on the back country road I saw the fire trucks a couple of miles behind. It was then that I realized we would beat them to our house. I couldn’t help but wonder what I was going to see when I arrived.
My thoughts were interrupted by my brother’s statement,
“Oh shit.”
I looked up and saw it…
The smoke.
It was a lot of smoke.
I had seen this sight a hundred times before, a pillar of smoke in the distance. I can never help but wonder what is causing it. I didn’t wonder this time.
I knew.
This was my house.
This was the house that we bought only five months ago.
This was the house that I had spent every weekend and many weeknights of the past 20 weeks working on. This was the house that we had just painted… and trimmed… and replaced doors… countertops… fans… lighting… and flooring. I had finally chosen my curtains and bedding and was finalizing room décor. This was our fixer upper… that we were almost done with.
As soon as I saw the smoke, I put my face in my hands and began to sob.
How can this be happening?
This can’t be happening.
But it was.
As we arrived to our home I saw my husband and three sweet babies in our front yard watching our house burn. The flames were pouring out of our children’s play room.
As my brother pulled into our front yard, I opened my door and had my foot to the ground before the truck had even stopped.
My babies. I needed to hold my babies.
I ran up to them, hugged them and thanked God for their safety.
The firefighters pulled in and we said a quick prayer for them as they began to work. We watched as they quickly got the flames under control and made sure the fire was extinguished. It all happened so fast and quickly it was over.
The fire was out.
I had never been in a house that had been on fire before. From the outside, I thought the loss would be isolated to one room... but I was wrong. I have heard the term “smoke damage”, but could not have imagined the extent of destruction it caused so quickly.
Our house was destroyed.
As I walked through the house, I couldn’t even process what I saw. There is no way this could be my house. My house was filled with natural light, light colored walls and white trim.
It was like I had walked into a nightmare version of my home.
Our normally bright house was a pit of darkness. Even with a flashlight I could hardly see. The air burned my throat and I had to leave after only a few minutes inside.
We all stood around for a bit and talked about how thankful we were that everyone was safe and how we all knew everything would work out.
Then one by one everyone said their goodbye’s and wished us the best.
Carter and I didn’t know what to do.
What are you supposed to do?
So we just sat in our front yard on a stump, baffled, at what had just happened.
What had just happened?
This fire had just demolished the last five months of our lives. And we weren’t just starting over, we were starting farther back than ever before.
How did we get here? We have never been those people that wanted a “fixer upper”; in fact, because of our lack of skills we tried to avoid it. But after two years of looking we decided this house had the greatest potential to give us what we dreamed of.
We bought our house hoping we could handle the adventure of a remodel. We had almost done it. It was far from perfect, but we were proud of it. We were proud of it because we had put so much time and effort into it. Of course we still had a ton of projects to do, but we had our final *big* project scheduled for the following week.
We have never worked so hard on anything.
All of our hard work, wiped away in about 20 minutes.
...
The next morning, I was lying in bed and a scripture I grew up hearing came to my mind.
“To give them beauty for ashes…”
I have always loved the sound of these words. Very poetic and they paint a beautiful picture of the redemptive process. It got me thinking… redemption is beautiful, but to be truthful, the process to bring beauty out of ashes is not easy.
I find myself today with a giant opportunity, I get to bring beauty from ashes… literally.
This process will not just happen. It will cost me. I have had, and will continue to have, many opportunities to not bring beauty from this situation.
I can choose not to make the most of it.
But I won’t.
I will not allow this situation to steal any more from me than it already has
I am headed to Redemption.
I do not worry about the destination, but the journey overwhelms me at times. I know how costly it is to go on this journey. It is not fun, but it is worth it. Even though I would not have chosen this. I can do this.
I will do this.
I will release my expectations.
I will stand on my faith.
I will hold on to my hope.
And I will choose to love.
And then I will wait. I will wait and watch it all unfold.
Beauty is coming.
Just wait and see.
Do you know of anyone who is also in an overwhelming time of their life? Forward this to them and let us make beauty together!
FOLLOW US ON Facebook AND Instagram!
DON'T FORGET TO SUBSCRIBE TO OUR E-MAIL LIST, SO YOU NEVER MISS A POST FROM REDEMPTION UNVEILED!