Beauty from Ashes- A Redemption Story

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

Mastering the Art of Letting Dreams Die

I am passionate about dreaming in this life. I love happy endings and dreams fulfilled. However, there is a very real part of this life that involves learning to allow dreams to come to an end.

Sometimes our dreams die a slow peaceful death and sometimes they come crashing down without any warning they would be gone so soon.

When we are young, the sky can feel like the limit. We don't doubt what our life will bring to us because we are confident that our dreams will come to pass and things will go as planned.

And sometimes they do.

However, as we get older and our dreams become reality, we often realize how much disappointment comes along with our dreams. Life seldom goes exactly as we planned. At times, we find ourselves grabbing for scraps of our dreams that have been left over from our reality.

And then there are the times that our dreams are taken from us completely.

No scraps left to gather. No dream left at all.

Nothing left to manage.

I am a firm believer in redemption, but sometimes there is nothing left to redeem. Sometimes the dream is simply gone.

What then?

How do we move forward in life?

Here are the steps I take when it is time to let a dream die…

1. Acknowledge it is gone.

The first step is to acknowledge what has happened. Look at the situation and define it for what it is. See the loss and allow yourself to acknowledge the new experience you have to live.

Sometimes this is easy and sometimes this is the hardest part of it all.

2. Let it go.

Depending on the loss, this step alone can take some time. Losing something and letting go of it are actually two different steps. The loss comes first, often times, without our consent. Letting go is our participation in the loss. Letting go is our choice to say we are making a new way in our life without our dream.

3. Grieve it.

It's ok and GOOD to acknowledge the loss and allow yourself to feel the pain.

It is important to identify it and talk to someone about it. Even if it sounds silly or you don't think it will help, be sure to find someone you can discuss your loss with.

4. Find hope.

Depending on the depth of your loss, this could take some time. However, at some point, it is essential to discover hope again. Not hope that the dream will return, but hope for a new dream.

5. Decide how you will view your fear.

I have found that once I have chosen to hope again, I am always faced with fear quickly after.  Fear of losing my new dream and fear of having to walk the journey of loss once again.

Fear will tell us he is our protector and our friend, but he is not. His true intention is to keep us limited in our life and keep our dreams small.

You and you alone will define how fear directs your future.

Dreaming is a beautiful part of our life. Losing the dream is not so beautiful, but it is necessary to understand that once we have lost a dream we must walk the steps to grieve our loss.

If we don't, we may experience something worse than our lost dream... A life of no dreaming at all.

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Letting Life’s Problems Change Me… For the Better

Recently, I was talking to a friend and mentioned to her that I am always looking to change. I hope to be a very different person in a year than I am today.

I said it without thinking a thing about it until she stopped me and asked,

“You want to change?”

Do you ever say things and not think about them until someone calls you out for saying it? I do all of the time. I thought about it for a minute and realized that I whole-heartedly believed and agreed with the statement I made.

I want to change.

 I want to constantly be growing, learning and becoming something more amazing than I was before.

This is a far cry from the way I used to live. Actually, it is a complete 180. I used to feel so attached to who I was. I didn’t want to change. In fact, the mere thought of it made me feel insecure. Heaven forbid, someone suggest it.

I was so utterly afraid of needing improvement that it kept me from growing.

This mindset kept me stuck. But not anymore.

I am now dedicated to learning who I am and facing it. Brokenness and all.

Everything in my life is now an opportunity for me to grow. I am learning to maneuver through my perceptions that have kept me from growing in the past

I now view conflict as an opportunity to learn about my brokenness instead of merely accusing the other person of being all of the problem.

I have learned to listen to the things that I say about other people when I am frustrated. I have realized that often times what comes out of my mouth says more about me than it says about them.

I no longer blame my unhappiness or frustrations on anyone else. I have chosen to take ownership and responsibility for my life.

I have embraced the very real fact that sometimes I am just flat wrong.

I give more grace, not just to others, but to myself.

 I allow my circumstances to grow me. I am embracing the true journey of this life. Not just a journey to my next achievement, but the journey of discovering who I am capable of being.

I am finding redemption.

I understand that I am beautiful, but I’ve got a lot of mess on top, around and within this beauty. I am dedicated to the process of unraveling, unveiling and redeeming this whole beautiful mess.

I want freedom and I don't want anything in this life to keep me from finding it.

Including myself.

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Learning to Fail

Recently, I was talking to Carter and was anxiously telling him about a failure. You know those moments that you are face to face with the inevitable fact that you have failed something or someone?

Ugh! I HATE those moments.

I do.

I was worked up and nervously talking away. When all of the sudden Carter stopped me, put his arms around me, looked me in the eyes and said two amazingly perfect words.

“Be Free.”

He continued to tell me that it was fine, that I was fine and that I had to learn to let these things go.

It was fine.

I was fine.

For the past decade of my life, I have been trying to learn how to fail and after ten plus years, I still don’t know exactly how to do it. Of course, I can fail. Failing is inevitable, but I am still learning how to fail well.

How can I still be here after so many years of believing in grace?

How is it possible that I am still so affected by my failure? Why are my limitations, mistakes, and misunderstandings so scary to me? I have come so far, but I still have a long ways to go.

In the past, when I have failed, I felt the need to cover up my failure and hide my mistakes. At the same time, I would defend my value as if it was something that needed defending. 

During my failure, there was always a little voice taunting me... What if my fears are true? What if my fail is a sign that I not only failed, but I am a failure?? But worse, what if I am a failure who is destined to fail forever?

What if I not only got it wrong but what if I am wrong?  What if I don't just make mistakes. What if I am the mistake? 

(insert tear.)

Several years ago, I became quite aware that my fear of failure could have the potential to steal my entire life from me. I rallied myself, gathered some peeps around me to help me stay on track, and I went forth into the world determined not to let my fear of failure steal from my life. 

I really don't enjoy failure. I am more of an enjoyer of success. Success is fun, but I don’t believe that we learn jack squat during our successes. Now our failures are a different story... our failures are full of opportunities.

Our failures show us our fears.

Our failures show us our weaknesses.

Our failures give us an opportunity to experience grace.

Do not get me wrong, I still do not enjoy failing, but I have learned to value the process. Learning to fail has taught me a lot about who I am and the fears that are within me. I have and will continue to fail. And that's ok.

We must embrace the role that failure will play in our lives.

Our goal should not be to not fail.

Our goal should be to learn how.

My fails still bother me at times, but no matter how hard I fall on my face I choose to be kind to myself. I evaluate my intentions and determine if they need any correction. If they do, I own it. When I struggle to have grace for myself, I ask someone to help me move forward without shame.

Perhaps the greatest change I have made is that I no longer act like it isn't happening. I face it so that I can learn from it. I choose to grow instead of choosing to remain the same. I own my issues. I own my mistakes. 

I own my failure.

I choose to heal and move forward fully knowing that I will fail again, but no longer allowing it to keep me from living the life I was meant to live.

Finding freedom in facing my brokenness. Do you want to join me?  CLICK HERE!!! 

Shame Is the Name of the Game

Have you ever been overwhelmed with shame? Have you ever felt shame for a choice or a mistake that you made? Maybe you have felt shame for not being the same as someone else? Or felt ashamed for being “you”? Have you ever felt like you aren't enough?

Shame is interesting. When we are shaming someone else, we feel superior. We feel that we are better than them because “we would never do that” or “say that” or “be that”. When we experience shame within ourselves, it makes us feel inferior. “How can I struggle with this?” or “Why did I say that?” or “Why did I do that?”

Shame is woven into our culture. It is used in our marriages, friendships, parenting, religion, politics, workplaces… It is everywhere. I am particularly talking about how we use it to dishonor and disgrace people.

Shame has a strange way of connecting people together. Many people and cultures embrace the idea of shaming others. They value shame. Entire movements have been fueled by it. People love to join together and shame others for their choices.

Shame is one of the loudest voices in the world right now.

Why?

Because it works.

Shame is often used to manipulate people. It keeps people “in line” and is powerful enough to control behavior. When someone uses shame on us, it connects us to our deepest fear of being rejected.

 “If I am not good enough, they will leave me.”

 “If I don’t measure up, they will not love me.”

Shame is a mighty force, but shame can’t possibly compare to the power of love. Love gives grace and mercy to accept us in our current condition.

Love gives us security.

“I love you just as you are.”

Shame gives us a threat.

“If you don’t measure up, I will leave you.”

Shame is powerful, but let me warn you, it only has the power to put people in shackles. Shame loves to keep people enslaved with guilt. It keeps us afraid and confined. I wonder how many of us have been too afraid to be honest about our internal struggles because we are unsure if we will be loved once we are.  

Shame keeps us in bondage.

Love gives us freedom.

Even if we decide we don’t want to live a life of shame, other people will try to give it to us. Some people don’t want to live without it. We cannot control the choices they make, but we can control the ones we make.

We must stop allowing shame to dictate our lives.

I have yet to meet a person who has arrived to the destination of “Perfection”. We must stop believing that we only have value if we are perfect. We must find a way to love the fact that we are a work in progress. Our value must not come from our degree of perfection, but from the fact that we are a human being.

It is vital that we get rid of the sliding scale that we use to measure people’s worth… including our own.

We are all on a journey, and this journey should not be treated with shame, but with appreciation. We should be grateful for the continual opportunity to learn, grow and become even more beautiful than we were yesterday.

We must not let the shame of who we have been keep us from the glory of who we are becoming. 

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That Awkward Moment When... Someone Tells You They Don't Like You

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Counting My Blessings

“The following is a guest blog by my mom, Shelly. My mom is an extraordinary woman. She has taught me how to fight for my life. Literally, everything good in my life would not have been possible if it weren’t for the things that she has taught me. I felt it very fitting to ask her to be a guest on my blog. I couldn’t help but be moved with tears when I read it. She is an inspirational fighter and I consider it my absolute privilege to have been raised by her. Enjoy. ”

— Haley

"Counting My Blessings"

The past five years of my life have been very difficult. I've been evaluating and asking myself how we've gotten through some of the hardest trials we've experienced. (Of course, besides the deaths of people we love that is a whole other category!) If I look over the past few years and focus on my disappointments I could come to the conclusion that life has really sucked. But the truth is, it hasn't.

Let me give you just a little background of where we've been...

I would consider us very blessed. I got married at 18 and my husband was 19. He stepped into a company that was started with family and it was very successful. Over the years, we acquired a lot… a lot of house, a lot of possessions and a lot of children. We had new cars and nice furniture, expensive clothes and a lifestyle of travel and fun. I never really had a budget… but probably should have!

I was able to be a stay at home mom and live the life of my dreams as I mothered my seven kids. We loved God, we were big givers and we were good people. I took care of my kids and we often opened up our home and took in other kids that needed a safe place.

Of course, in life there are many twist and turns so I will make this very long story short. Through many circumstances of life, family member deaths and a bad economy in February 2013 we lost pretty much everything we had acquired over 30 years of hard work and marriage.

Boom it was gone.

Our house, our company, our salary, our lifestyle was all taken from us. Our very hard fought fight to stay afloat had ended and we sat dumbfounded at what in the world was going to happen to us.

As I look back over that time I honestly don't know how we made it… but we did. It was absolutely overwhelming. I felt totally and completely unequipped to live this life with nothing. We felt too old to start over, but we actually had no other choice.

We live in a small town and everywhere I went I felt like literally all eyes were on me. It's quite the feeling when you are at your most vulnerable and you feel like everyone, real or imagined, is talking about your financial failures. 

Though, I didn't have much time to worry about that because my family was either going to sink or swim.

We still had a senior and sophomore in high school and a fourth grader living at home. My husband was exhausted and broken. There were days I felt like I was having to give him CPR on the boat deck while my kids were in deep water barely keeping their heads afloat. As I would breathe one breath into my husband on deck I would smile and yell overboard to my kids, "Don't worry, we're going to be fine, keep paddling, you're doing great!"

I felt gripped with panic and fear of what was going to happen to us.

I felt great pressure for me to be the stabilizing factor to all my family who looked to me to tell them everything was going to be ok. I had always played that roll in our family, but this time the stakes seemed really high. The truth is there were many times I was scared to death. It felt like the whole ship of this family would sink to the depths if I didn't keep myself together.

What do you do when you need to look brave, calm and in control, but you feel you are so ill-equipped and in the most uncharted territory of your lifetime?

For me, I only knew one thing to do. Pray. It wasn't like this was a new lifestyle for me. I am a praying woman, but it was a desperate kind of prayer.

 It was the kind of prayers that are whispered in the middle of the night and all through the day.

As always, my God was faithful to comfort me. In the beginning days I heard simple things like, "Breathe". I would simply stop and take a deep breath in. I would imagine I was breathing in peace and exhaling worry and fear. In the stillness of the night I would hear God say, "Everything is going to be all right".

I wrote the things that I had found out to be complete truths of God in my life.

1. God will never leave me or forsake me.

2. All things work together for good to those who love the Lord.

3. God has a plan for myself and my family.

4. God is faithful.

5. God loves us. (Even when we don't feel like circumstances are saying that.)

There were days I would have to read this list over and over just to get through the day. Each time, as I did this I found myself back at peace. It was the firm foundation I could come back to when I felt shaky. I felt like I had to be very diligent to do this daily and sometimes hourly.

Through this time, I learned some things from God and life that I believe are very foundational to help through times of crisis. After I became more stabilized I felt like I could begin to take some actions. These are some that helped me.

1. I had to purposely live in the moment.

Not just one day at a time, but literally one second at a time. No matter how hard it was I could not let myself be dragged from the moment I was living.  I could find peace there. There was no peace in the past of why or how this had happened. There was certainly no peace in the thinking of the future. How were we going to live with no income? Where were we going to live? How will we provide for our children? How will we get health insurance for our handicapped daughter? You know… those kind of “little” nagging questions that can weigh heavy on your mind!

2. I counted my blessings.

Every day I wrote down our blessings. That old hymn I was made to sing over and over in church came rushing back. "Please turn to hymn number 237, Count Your Blessings". So I did. Every single day I read over what blessing I had written down the day before. Then, I wrote down the new blessings that had come. Some days my blessings were big, miraculous and awe inspiring. Other days they were barely there… like, we were still alive!!

3. Lastly, I made an absolute choice to not feel sorry for myself. I would not allow myself to play the victim.

As I look back, I stand in amazement that we have always had what we needed as we needed it. We've had our needs met which is miraculous in itself, but more amazing to me is that we have not just survived we have thrived. It doesn't make sense, but that is just how God works!

 I have experienced joy on levels I have never experienced before. Peace is my companion in new ways that I have never had. Thankfulness and gratitude comes much more effortlessly.

Don't get me wrong, there are days when I call my close friends who have walked faithfully by my side through this dark, hard journey and I say overly dramatic statements that they know I don't mean.  I question how long this "blessed teaching moment" will continue and are tempted to throw a little temper tantrum.

Don't we all love these character building moments in this journey we call life? Not really.....except when I look at the person I've become and realize that God's plan really might be better than mine.

Who knew??

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Thriving Through Difficulty

I used to spend my life trying to stay on top of my problems. I used to try to avoid pain and difficulty. I used to find myself striving for perfection. Striving for happiness. No longer. I have now realized that this life is not about striving for perfection either within me or within my circumstances.

I believe that so many of us are missing our full potential of this life because our goal is to “be happy and avoid pain”. The problem with avoiding pain is that there are parts of the healing process that feel painful. Growing and learning will never be easy. If we try to avoid pain, we will deny ourselves the opportunity to truly heal.

Our problems aren’t the problem. Our problem is that we allow our problems to dictate our happiness. If our contentment is based on our circumstances, our contentment will always be at risk of being taken.

Our circumstances should not be given the power to take our peace.

We must not view our circumstances as the problem. We can easily spend days, weeks, months and years of our life striving to rid ourselves of problems. The issue with living like this is that no matter how hard we try, there will always be another problem at our door. Always.

We must stop viewing our difficulties as our enemy.

Our difficulties are not what keeps us stuck, our inability to grow is.

We must begin to understand that healing in this life will come at a cost. It will cost us something to grow. It will cost us to let go of our expectations and choose to enjoy the life we do have.

There is such beauty in difficulty. Our difficulty gives us the opportunity to heal. Our difficulty gives us an opportunity to choose beauty even when we don’t see it.

Our challenges give us the opportunity to choose grace.

Our fears gives us the opportunity to choose faith.

Our discouragement gives us the opportunity to choose hope.

When we struggle we are given the opportunity to choose things that we don’t feel. We cannot underestimate the value of this experience. In a world that says we should never deny our feelings, it is a very powerful moment when we realize the best thing we can do at times is to deny our emotions.

We must go on the journey to find peace. A peace that passes understanding and is not blown to and fro by every wind. We must become strong and find a firm place to stand. We must not allow ourselves to be controlled by our outward circumstances, but our inward strength.

We must find a way to soar above the storm. We must find a way to thrive during difficulty. We must. Our life depends on it.

Finding peace is what this life is about. If you haven’t found it…

keep searching.

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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.” 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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We have never worked so hard on anything.

All of our hard work, wiped away in about 20 minutes. 

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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!

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