Beauty after Brokenness

This post = encouraging "Words of Wisdom" from Godly women, with the common theme of finding beauty, hope, and strength in God after a season of feeling broken.  So many shallow words and hollow promises are spoken by people whose faith has not truly been tested, but those who have fought through their own despair or darkness have more grace and a far greater impact in urging the rest of us to fight, to press on in Christ, and to define our life and identity in Him!

Jesus himself was described as "despised and rejected - a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief."  I am sorry He went through that pain, but I'm so thankful that He understands not only the temptations we face, but the physical, emotional, and spiritual pain we endure.  He has suffered through rejection, loss, and grief.  He knows the depth of it, He feels compassion for it, and most importantly, He knows how to press in and follow God with hope and patience as you walk through it.  I'm seeking a closer friendship with Him, and I'm learning to trust Him more deeply, and it's exciting!  I'm realizing more and more that it is a gift to feel things deeply and to have this unquenchable desire for lasting connection - it draws me to God repeatedly as the only true Source of unfailing love.  ...And it really is such a hopeful thought to me that God is willing and able to redeem my past and use the hard things in my life to bring hope and strength to others.  I love knowing that, despite my own weakness, the life and light of Christ inside me is something that darkness cannot overcome!!

“In Him was life,

And that life was the light of all mankind.

The light shines in the darkness,

And the darkness has not overcome it.”

~John 1:4-5

Anyway, I hope you're encouraged and strengthened by these words...

"Over the past few years in my own journey I found myself in an unknown place, a place where a heart could break deeper and wider and in more directions than I could have imagined possible. Mom has walked alongside me on this road further than any human could be expected to walk with another... carrying my burdens and helping me shoulder the grief that felt too much to bear.  Mom is tender and she is strong and she is not afraid to look pain and grief and loss dead in the eye. Even more, she is daring enough to hope against hope. To see in others, even me, the beginnings of life and growth and health and wholeness where others might only see brokenness and death. She has shined the light of Jesus on me more times than I can count."
~Beth's daughter, Melissa (FULL POST HERE)

"As we face the most terrible, gut-wrenching, hurtful parts of our lives, we grow powerful and strong.  In our weakness, Jesus' strength is made strong.  Facing the pain refines us.  It makes us a beautiful, broken vessel Jesus can refurbish into something magnificent.  Something more beautiful than what we started out with... Every day that I face those thoughts, that breath-stealing pain, I turn my thoughts to God.  To my heavenly Father whose love is overwhelming.  Whose heart is kind, loving, gentle.  Who has a plan for me.  Who is my friend and provider.  Who has loved me with an everlasting love.  That's what gets me through those painful moments.  It doesn't get easier.  God just makes me stronger and a tiny bit wiser in how to deal with it each day and each time I am faced with the reminders.  It's hard to be emotionally healthy... I understand looking at things through that one lens that colors everything differently.  It's hard.  But Jesus is making us stronger!"
~Sarah Elizabeth (Part of what may be the longest and best text message ever! lol)

"What do we do when the very thing we think defines us is ripped from our grasp?  [It] left me broken to my core, as it is with the loss of all things in life that we hope for, plan on, define ourselves by. During this time in my life, the nights were especially dark, but the most important thing was I found that when the sun of a new day would shine through my windows, I was still me.  The pain was there, and the hurt was real, but the light that God was shining on me with each new day was revealing something new.  I was beginning to see the beauty that can only exist among the broken.

As the sun comes up with the gift of a new day remember that you are still you.  Remember that God is still good. Do not let what you think you need, or the brokenness you are sitting in, define who you are... What was once a broken mess can slowly, over time, become the beauty you have been longing for all along."  
~Heather Avis  (FULL POST HERE)

"In a day-in-age where we’re sometimes told that a real woman is someone who has to look flawless and have the personality of Oprah, it was refreshing to reflect on the real, raw beauty of women around me. I came to the conclusion that a real Proverbs 31 Woman has some of the following attributes:  

She’s been through hardships in life but doesn’t give up. Her life has never been and still isn’t perfect, but she’s an overcomer.  

She’s a giver. She’s constantly looking for ways to help others and enrich others’ lives. 

In every season of life, she loves the Lord. Some of the women I sent letters to were young…I think the youngest was 20. The oldest was my 90-year-old grandmother. Despite the 70-year age span, each woman had something in common: she seeks the Lord in her daily life and tries to do what pleases him."

~Lindsay Morris (FULL POST HERE)

"When what is most important, most cherished is ripped from your hands, you learn not to clutch onto anything tightly for fear it will be taken away.  The emptiness of your hands slowly shifts from an unbearable weight to a false comfort.  You tell yourself you cannot hurt if you do not love.  You dare not dream because the only dream that can’t be crushed is the one that never existed in the first place.  Expectation is a deadly enemy that must be vanquished.  Surviving—moment to moment, day by agonizing day—is all that matters.  Thriving is for those draped in the luxury of their deepest fear never coming to fruition... 

I’m just beginning to awaken to true hunger and feebly grab hold of a jarring defiance that says ten percent isn’t good enough.  I want the whole freaking hundred.  I want the holiday at sea, the life more abundantly, the what no eye has seen nor ear has heard nor mind conceived.  I want to believe in the possibility of change within me that would require a cracking open of the sky and the transformative power of God raining on and reigning in me.  I want restoration of the years the locusts have eaten, and beauty—redemptive, healing beauty—for ashes."
~Laura Allison (FULL POST HERE)

"I believe that God is making all things new.  I believe that Christ overcame death and that pattern is apparent all through life and history: life from death, water from a stone, redemption from failure, connection from alienation.  I believe that suffering is part of the narrative, and that nothing really good gets built when everything is easy.  I believe that loss and emptiness and confusion often give way to new fullness and wisdom.  But for a long season, I forgot all those things... Looking back now, I can see that it was more than anything a failure to believe in the story of who God is and what He is doing in the world."
~Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet