Today I welcome Christi Armstrong to my blog and love her insight and heart!
When I was a little girl, I LOVED candy corn. It was one of my favorite treats, and is now one of my daughter’s “go to’s” as well. My grandfather always had some around the house and I remember, I would eat and eat and eat, untill I got sick from so much sugar. Good memories for me.
As I was sitting down at the table today, looking at my daughter’s bowl of candy corn that she is diligently and patiently working through, as fast as mommy will let her, I started thinking about the process I used, to decide which ones to eat. I wasn’t a “take a handful and pile it in” kind of kid. I hand picked all my pieces and ate them slowely, section by section (I still firmly believe the different sections have different flavors), savoring each one.
While digging my finger around in the pile of yellow orange and white yummyness today, I thought about how, as a little girl, I always chose the the ‘different’ ones. You know, the ones without the white on top, the ones with no yellow or a forgotten middle section, the factory “oops’s”. Somehow, in my child’s brain, those were the special ones, the unique ones, and I would pride myself in finding all of those that I could and snatching them away for my own pile of treats. They were more exciting to me than the rest of the bag combined.
Isn’t this so much like how our Father views us? We see our broken, battered, differences as imperfections, making us flawed and unworthy of significance. But God sees them as unique life marks, created or allowed by Him to frame and shape who we are and who we are to become. He knows that to be different is an exciting thing, because it’s by being set apart and different that we can have the capacity to change the world around us. If we don’t walk through any pain, we can’t very effectively help others who are going through it too.
Our pain can cripple us, or it can single us out to be able to help others who are breaking now, who are realizing how different they are right now, who are getting pieces torn out of them at this moment. How else can we really help them, than by having walked through that fire ourselves?
God doesn’t look at our scars and see us as the good, the bad and the ugly…He sees us, all of us, as His children who have been wounded in the battle and if we let him, He can use those wounds to help heal others. There is beauty that comes from pain, if you stop protecting it long enough to let God close enough to heal you and use it for His Glory.
Give thanks for your broken pieces, because through them, God is giving you an opportunity to serve Him. Though our bodies or our emotions may be broken or wounded for a time, our spirits are made whole through the touch of His hand and this will give us the strength to continue on. While you are continuing on, don’t just carry that brokenness around with you, letting it weigh you down as you walk through life. Use it to glorify Him, by guiding others to Him through it. Allow God to create and fulfill the purpose and meaning of your pain.
Christi Armstrong
http://www.facebook.com/ChristiArmstrong.page
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