The Beauty in Brokenness

It's March 25, 2013 today. 

5 years to the day that Adam Carter passed away and my life broke. I was broken then and I'm broken now. But it's a beautiful brokenness. 

It's hard for me to feel sorrow when I think of him. Its hard for me to continue to mourn when he brought me such joy. Its hard for me to see all God has done in my life through his legacy and still be sad. Maybe thats wrong. 

But I choose to see beauty in the brokenness.

God's brought so many blessings to me through the pain of losing Adam, and He's not done yet. 

I'm at Urban Life, living with 4 other girls in an apartment and working as a team day in and day out. It isn't hard to notice when any one of us is a little off. When any one of us slips up. And its all in intentional community which makes you want to mask it all a little more than usual. We're all believers here, we can't have struggles, right?

Wrong. We bond in that. We, as a body, are broken and the only way we can be healed and bring Jesus into the center of our relationships is to be broken together and to receive His grace together. By HIS wounds, we are healed. And tonight I got to walk through that. I got to sit with my roommate, my sister, my fellow believer in Christ, and experience healing - in her, in me, and with Jesus. There isn't a praise high enough or loud enough for this moment. She laid out on the floor and confessed her struggle. The storm we've been trying to pray her through for a while, she was ready to surrender, and she was ready to heal. 

Her strength in acceptance of healing brings me to my knees. If I had only known what she knows sooner, how much pain I could have saved myself agonizing over Adam. If I had only stopped trying so hard to be strong and to work through the depression and to fix it myself, if I had only relied on Jesus to heal me right where I was. If I had only believed that He could sooner... But it comes now. In His perfect timing. And as I lead her through the processing of healing I'm preaching more to myself than to her. Thank you Lord for speaking beauty into my brokenness.

And 2013 years later on a Sunday that brought such rejoicing and acknowledgment that Jesus Christ is King so many years ago, we too bow to Him. We too lay out clothes and palms for Him to walk on. We too go after him and accept his teachings - we too begin this journey toward resurrection. His timing is impeccable, and I can't comprehend the gift He's bestowing on two roommates in Charlotte, NC this Easter season. Thank you Lord for allowing us to begin a journey to healing through this Passion Week. Thank you that we get to have a small small taste of dying to ourselves, to be raised to life in Your Son Jesus. Thank you for the sacrifice you made, Jesus, so that we may freely receive this grace and healing from our Father. Thank you that we hear your voice, and that we are experiencing Easter in a whole new way this year. Thank you for sending your son, to tell The The Greatest Story Forever Told. 

"To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he might be glorified." - Isaiah 61:3