letters I can't send (#3 of 3)

“The greatest legacy one can pass on to one’s children and grandchildren is not money or other material things accumulated in one’s life, but rather a legacy of character and faith.”

~Billy Graham

The old saying, thrown around our shoulders like a quilt of comfort during trials, “God will never give you more than you can handle”, is straight up not true and not biblically supported.

God will indeed give us more than we can humanly handle because when we are broken and at the end of our human rope is often when we look up to Him to carry us through. Those times, if we choose to lean into Him, that is where our greatest growth can occur.

“But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” (2 Corinthians 12:9)

In the fires of life our character and faith are refined and develop roots. The challenges along our journey either make us bitter or better, prideful, or humbled. We get to choose.

We don’t get to choose to experience the fires. We ONLY get to choose how we will deal with them. Will we allow ourselves to be bitter or better, humbled or puffed up with pride?

The fires we go through, the burns and wounds of betrayal, the pain, physical, mental, or emotional, and all our hardships, they will leave us with scars. How we wear our scars reveal what was gained through those fires.

Most of us do not want scars, especially young girls, or women in general. I know I try to prevent them. I remember when I was a little girl, and I was humiliated about something physical that I was terrified was going to leave a permanent scar.

I was about five or six . I had a HUGE cluster of warts on the top of my right hand, and they were so embarrassing. The medicine/acid we used to try to get rid of them made them raw and sore and often bloody.

I remember crying over the shame of them and the fear that my hand was always going to bear the massive scar of that cluster and that everyone would always ask me what had caused it. I know now at 50 that this sort of scar is really quite minor, but to a little girl it was quite traumatizing. I did not want to have that scar the rest of my life to remind me of that horrible time in my six-year-old life.

Webmd defines scars this way, “Scars are a natural part of the body's healing process. A scar results from the biologic process of wound repair in the skin and other tissues. Most wounds, except for very minor ones, result in some degree of scarring. Scars can result from accidents, diseases, skin conditions such as acne, or surgeries.”

While physical scars are visual and can be seen, we all know there are other scars just as damaging, although maybe not visible to the eye.

This other kind of scarring is definitely with us for life.

Emotional and or mental scars are deep, and they are tender to the touch, and they are there, whether seen or unseen. I have these scars, and the younger me, the twenty and thirty something me, used to want to hide them so no one would ever know of the wounds. I wanted them to go away. I wanted to pretend they never happened.

I used to wish that I could rewrite history
I used to dream that each mistake could be erased
Then I could just pretend
I never knew the me back then
I used to pray that You would take this shame away
Hide all the evidence of who I've been
(Point of Grace)

The older me now knows that my scars serve as beautiful reminders of my journey and the faithfulness of God in my life. My scars are there for others to see God’s hand of restoration in my life, and for others to see what God can do through our brokenness if we allow Him in and make Him our anchor and our cornerstone for the rebuilding and the redeeming of the years our enemy meant for harm.

Some time ago I learned of Kintsugi. Kintsugi is the Japanese art of putting broken pottery pieces back together using gold. This art form is built on the idea that in embracing our flaws and brokenness we can actually become even more beautiful and stronger.

Every break in a piece of pottery is unique. Instead of repairing an item like new, the 400-year-old technique actually highlights the "scars" as a part of the design. This can also serve as a metaphor for healing ourselves and teaches us an important lesson: Sometimes something more unique, more beautiful, and more resilient is created in the process of repairing things that have broken.

Isaiah 64:8 tells us that Jesus is the potter, and we are the clay. I love the visual I have now in my fifties, when I look back on my vessel, my life, and all the brokenness throughout. I see the scars, the gold filling in all the cracks of my brokenness and pain, but I don’t see a woman covered with scars, or a broken ugly vessel that’s of no use. Instead, I see a woman stronger than she could have ever imagined, a woman who has gained so much wisdom through her trials, and a new and beautiful piece of art crafted by the nail scarred hands of the greatest artist and potter ever, and I see that as priceless.

“He has made everything beautiful in its time.” (Ecclesiastes 3: 1a)

Jesus is our Kintsugi artist. He restores and repairs us making us more unique, even more beautiful, and remarkably resilient through the healing of our broken places.

Dear Forty, Something, Melinda,

You have now reached the point where you can take an honest look back over your life and you can pinpoint where you went off track. Poor decisions triggered the sequence of events that temporarily pulled you further and further away from God and His plan for your life. If you look, you will see God’s faithfulness in never turning His back on you as you continued seeking Him and His will through all the sin and the brokenness.

Look at you now! Look at the beautiful vessel God has crafted you into. He filled your broken spaces with His gifts of grace and mercy. You have made it through your 20’s, 30’s, and your early 40’s. Looking back now it all seems like it went by in a blink. Isn’t it crazy how long those years seem when you are in the midst of them, and yet one day you look back and they feel as though they were just a blip on the radar? Look how you have grown as a woman of God, and yet I can tell you, even better days are still yet to come!

You survived the previous decades, and you are still standing, stronger than ever before. At this point you should look back and see what God has done in your life. While you are on the other side of the brokenness now, you still won’t fully see every way in which God has redeemed the wrongs done to you until your 50’s, and I suspect, based on what I know sitting here at 56, you will just keep learning more and more with each day you are blessed to live.

Things did not, in almost any facet of your life, go as you had planned or desired, but you are able to see clearly now that what first appeared to be a disadvantage, God leveraged to your advantage, and some of those unanswered prayers were in your best interest. You have learned that even though you feel overlooked and dismissed by the world, God still sees you. God still hears you, and He still loves you.

You are learning that God will use us more in our trials than in our talent because that is when others will see God’s power in us and not our own strength. God will get the glory and all the credit. John 4:4 tells us, “Greater is He that is in me, than he that is in the world.” God uses our visible scars to show His faithfulness and work in and through us. He is the potter. We are His clay.

photo credit: Earl Wilcox @earl_plannerzone

Oh, how excited I am for you to see how God honors your decision, your intentional choice to wait on a relationship until your sons are grown and moving out on their own. God is going to bless you with a very good man, but because of your past betrayals, God is going to give you many obstacles in this new relationship that in the end will build the foundation you need to fully trust this man.

God is going to call you to reach deep into your heart and trust Him with the dynamics of blending your family, Greg’s family from his first marriage, and the family from his wife that passed away. It is going to require A LOT of humility on your part which you don’t have on your own, but as you lean into God and fully trust Him to lead you in this effort, He will be faithful to see that you receive confirmation and affirmation as needed that will in the end be the foundation of trust you need to have faith in the man Greg is.

It will be through the next few years of your relationship with Greg, your career changes, and all aspects of your life that you will begin to see the unfolding of your journey, how you got to where you are, the weaving of the threads and how they are coming together to form this beautiful tapestry of your life, and, in the mending of your broken places and wounds, how the potter has shaped and remolded you into a vessel that can be used to pour living water into the lives of others who are hurting.

You are going to finally see and trust, that God’s timing is always right, and always the best timing. You are going to see that as a pastor Davey Blackburn says in his Pain to Purpose study (that you will do later in life) on the life of King David, “God will make certain that you get the invitation to your coronation when the time is right.”

God bless & Stay the Path!

Something(s) better are yet to come!

Your 50 Something Older & Wiser Self

Often we don’t know our full potential until we go through the valleys of darkness, and then it takes a lot of work and awareness to be fully healed..

At 56, as I look back through years of journals, I can see that the path from our dreams to our destiny is riddled with delays, detours, discouragement, and toil. God often has to strip us of our idols, our pride, our legalism, our self-righteousness, our addictions. Whatever the barrier might be, God will strip them from us before we can fulfill our destiny.

As I read through these journals, many tear stained and ink smeared, I am again reminded of how I used to wish and beg God to erase my past so I could pretend it never happened. I wanted to undo all my mistakes, to remove any consequences, and most definitely not have any scars showing.

But God loves us way too much for that, and where I am now, I can see that, and I know it’s true. In fact, if I could send a handwritten letter to Jesus, here is what my fifty-six-year-old self would say…

Dear Jesus, My First Love & My Friend,

Thank you, for forgiving my stubbornness and pride that led me down a road you didn’t desire for me.

Thank you, for your faithfulness to hear my prayers and know my heart.

Thank you, for the brokenness that brought me to you, I mean really brought me to you.

Thank you, for not leaving me where I was with shallow roots and living on the surface of my faith.

Jesus, I can look back through my life, through the pages of my journals now, and I can see your hand all throughout my life.

Forgive me for doubting and questioning your integrity for so many years. God, I can see how you have used the various threads that seemed so disjointed and random at the time, to weave together this complicated, yet beautiful tapestry called my life.

Father, I am so grateful that You are the shaper of our souls. Thank you, that in your hands we will be shaped and molded into new vessels that you will use in spite of all our cracks and broken places. You see beauty in the scars, and because You do, so do I.

Thank you, that my prayer is no longer for you to rewrite my history or erase my mistakes, but rather that you heal my wounds, and leave the scars.

Leave them as a reminder of your mercy, your grace, and your faithfulness.

May my scars be reminders, not of my hurt, but of Your healing.

May they always serve to remind me of the pit you pulled me out of and set me free.

Heavenly Father may others see my scars as beauty marks that help tell my story and shout to the world that God is faithful and healing us every day!

Love,

Your daughter, Once Broken, now restored

Heal the Wound
I used to wish that I could rewrite history
I used to dream that each mistake could be erased
Then I could just pretend
I never knew the me back then
I used to pray that You would take this shame away
Hide all the evidence of who I've been
But it's the memory of the place You brought me from
That keeps me on my knees and even though I'm free
Heal the wound but leave the scar
A reminder of how merciful You are
I am broken, torn apart, take the pieces of this heart
And heal the wound but leave the scar
I have not lived a life that boasts of anything
I don't take pride in what I bring
But I'll build an altar with the rubble that You've found me in
And every stone will sing of what You can redeem
Heal the wound but leave the scar
A reminder of how merciful You are
I am broken, torn apart, take the pieces of this heart
And heal the wound but leave the scar
Don't let me forget
Everything You've done for me
Don't let me forget
The beauty in the suffering
Heal the wound but leave the scar
A reminder of how merciful You are
I am broken, torn apart, take the pieces of this heart
Heal the wound but leave the scar
Heal the wound but leave the scar
A reminder of how merciful You are
I am broken, torn apart, take the pieces of this heart
And heal the wound but leave the scar, leave the scar
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Clint Lagerberg / Nicole Nordeman
Heal the Wound lyrics © Capitol CMG Publishing, Warner Chappell Music, Inc