This is an excerpt from my upcoming book, and post 17 of week 17. I am always amazed at God’s patience with his children as we stumble through life. I’m so glad he never gives up on us.
We come from places of deep brokenness, and God is not hindered in making us into beautiful jewels.
The following stories are important truths God showed me over a period of years when I had been wandering in a wilderness of disappointment and discouragement for most of my adult life. I had two failed marriages to my name and, being a Christian, divorce had never been an option before. My life fell apart not once, but twice. A lot of re-thinking happened during that time. And a lot of healing.
Satan had convinced me for many years that I was not enough. I wasn’t good enough. I didn’t do enough. I had too many character flaws. I was too prickly and too aloof. I can still hear my mom saying to me when I was a child, “left-handed people can’t do nothing right.” Those words still hurt to this day.
Then my first husband made sure I understood I was nothing on my own, and that everything I had was only because of him. And since my mom had told me over and over I couldn’t do anything right, I believed him.
Then my second husband always told me I was prickly and cold. And I believed him as well.
I was not enough. I had never been enough.
Enter, God.
It was during my second divorce that God providentially placed me in Arizona where I lived all alone for four years. I was born and raised in Michigan and was happy to leave not just the cold weather and gray skies, but the level of stress that was killing me.
That self-imposed isolation was crucial to my growth and healing. God took the time to gently teach me something so powerful that it upended everything I had believed up to then. I was his special treasure, cherished, and beloved. No one had ever made me feel that way before. It was a brand-new experience and I soaked it up. Those years in Arizona changed my life. My heart is still there.
This is what I learned: I am enough. I have always been enough.
After four years I ended up back in Michigan, living in my parents’ basement and helping my dad care for my mom after she was diagnosed with dementia, where a whole host of new lessons were learned.
Then God spirited me away to Florida, where the lessons have continued.
As you read these short stories of perseverance and endurance, I hope they’ll be as encouraging to you as learning the lessons were to me.
They aren’t necessarily chronological, and I’ve had to re-learn some lessons over and over, so don’t feel discouraged when it happens to you.
One of the wonderful things about our Heavenly Father is that he’s patient with us, like a shepherd with his sheep.
“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” (John 10:27)
He carefully watches over us and searches for us when we wander off, lovingly bringing us back to the flock. He doesn’t abandon us to our fate – he comes and finds us, rescuing us from the consequences of our own actions. He lovingly binds up our wounds making sure we’re going to be ok.
That’s the kind of God worth living for.
