Sunshine and Roses

Sunshine and Roses

 

 

   Some days hope breathes slow and shallow; other days it is bursting with excitement and expectation. When out of the blue God miraculously provided the means for us to go to Haiti to celebrate our son's 5th birthday with him, tears of joy fell like rain on our dry and weary souls. Sometimes the answers to our prayers come in a form and time that we least expect; and we are humbled beyond measure as a result.

    We have learned that when you ask God to move in your situation you relinquish all rights to your own understanding. It's all or nothing. Either we trust God or we don't. There's no halfway meeting point; no "I'll go this far, but no farther." And so I agreed to go all the way. And even on those days when I feel like quitting, I resolve to trust instead.

     As we turtled our way through the Haitian streets, I found myself feeling quite at home. Waves of weariness washed over the broken bits and pieces of my life, a life battered and bruised by the constant storms that seem more there than not. The debris left behind in the wake hardly seems worth the time and effort to shift through, and yet there is great treasure to be found, even in brokenness. Where the depths of heartache threaten to become a personal tsunami, I know pearls of wisdom and beauty are being formed.

    The brokenness of the world has become my own. No longer am I so self-absorbed that I cannot see beyond my own pain and suffering. I once was blind, but now I see. I see the hurting hearts, the hearts longing to be loved and made whole. I see the depths of depravity in the hearts of others, as well as in my own heart. I see the hate, the intolerance, the lack of love. I see all too well some days. I never knew broken could be so ugly and so beautiful simultaneously; for it is in our brokenness that we become whole.

    The real beauty is that God is drawn to our brokenness, to our weaknesses, for grace is His passion. The butterfly is proof that you can go through a tremendous amount of darkness and emerge bright and beautiful. And when I saw my son again for the first time in over a year, he was indeed bright and beautiful.

    The changes in our son brought us to tears. He is now more outgoing and playful, full of hugs and kisses and laughter. The vacant look in his eyes has been replaced by an awareness of the life before him. He has been bathed in countless prayers; he has been kept by his one true Father.

    Things don't always look like we think they should. I thought my son would be home for his 5th birthday. Sometimes the conditions of our miracle are not obvious until we surrender our preconceived notions of how things should go. Life is not all sunshine and roses; sometimes the sun will burn you and roses have thorns. Beauty is revealed and healing comes when we recognize that there is value in both serenity and suffering and that peace can coexist with pain.

    Love is our deepest longing, and yet the fear of it being absent is sometimes too great to bear, and so we hide in our self-made shells in a feeble attempt to love from afar. And while love can penetrate many things, it cannot penetrate our own fearful hearts if we continue to hide.

    Love is a choice. Sometimes it hurts to love; love requires risk and vulnerability and death to self. But love never fails to bring life. And our son is beginning to know that he is loved and in turn is taking the risk to love back.

    Be the bread. Be the bread that feeds hungry souls and you will find your own soul miraculously nourished.