Dear Life in Ruins...a letter of HUMILITY.

Dear Life in Ruins, 

"Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies" John 11:25

They say, "Be careful what you wish for," and as someone, who is herself all around way too careful, I have made my wishes as such. But, when you start making plans you never stop to consider what God may have to show you as a result. It was never our wish really, we did not even comprehend all it could mean, and we certainly did not expect what it would produce, but somewhere along the way God placed on our hearts a retreat weekend based on the theme, "Let the ruins come to life." 

When we picked this theme, last fall, we never saw how God would build it into so much of our lives this spring. And maybe we chose the theme after thoughtful consideration as to what God wanted, or maybe God picked the theme for us most certainly from the beginning, but either way it goes, chicken then egg or egg then chicken, that theme for our weekend was profoundly perfect.

As the time of planning continued, things fell one after the other. Commitments failed, deadlines passed, regulations piled up, and one after another we were combating real life ruins. 

I am a classified type A personality, and as each brick fell in my lap, I wanted quickly to assemble them back onto the wall. So many nights I cried as things just kept going so unlike we had wished, hoped, and planned. I thought, and thought of how we could fix things, and what the next step might be, and then we executed accordingly. And all the while I kept saying this one phrase, "I just wish I understood why this is happening."

We marched ahead, one ruin after another. When we thought it could not get worse, it did. And each time, I thought if I just did this or figured out that, we would be back to perfection. But, as time and trials pressed on, I found myself exhausted, so much so, that I had to just let go. There were too many mishaps, too much for my mind to wrap itself around and fix back to the perfection I had envisioned all along. And slowly I realized, I could not make it all go perfectly. In fact, I realized, I could not make it go at all. In my moment of desperation, I left the weekend, the plans, and the wishes to God. 

I had to let go of my plans and place my trust fully in His. It turned out, my plans were not coming to life anyways. 

As the weekend unfolded, I watched as what I thought was an unraveled heap of ruins, gradually began to build up into something so much more beautiful than that. Little pieces, that I thought would never go together, ended up lining up perfectly. Things that I saw as failures, became successes in the light of Christ's love. And tiny miracle after tiny miracle, I watched as ruins came to life.

I think when I look back on these past couple months, I will remember the struggles and trials. I will be reminded of  the moments I felt like a giant pile of brokenness and a rumbled mess. I will, because those moments were real. But, I  think what I will always hold onto the most, is the way I saw God make those moments into life. And more importantly how God made those moments into life based not on me, or who I am, or what I did but because of who He is and the power He has to work in all of us. 

As I sat with my small group that weekend,  and shared about life, love, and loss, I knew we all have ruins. I saw in each of us a hurt or trial and mark on our journey that united us in brokenness. And even as I watched God build ruins back to life, I wanted to take these ruins away from those sweet girls. I saw myself eager to fix things. I wanted to tell them everything is going to be ok. I wanted to be the one building the ruins back to life. And then, in adoration it hit me, quite frankly like a ton of bricks; I cannot bring ruins back to life. I cannot make everything perfect. I cannot decide all the plans. I cannot take away the hurt those girls know. I just cannot, as much as I try, that is not my job or my privilege. All I can do is point them and myself back to the love of God, the master builder and life giver. All I can do is trust in His infinite goodness. All I can do is let Him be the Savior.

I think when we make our wishes we see perfection and pure good, And maybe in our perfect world, life would be all cheery and bright and no one would experience hurt or pain. But in my own moments of hurt, confusion, and brokenness, I can rely on one hope, God offers me LIFE. And He offers it over and over again. But, what stops us from knowing that life is the one person that longs for it the most, ourselves. 

Life is not perfect. We all have ruins. We all always will. And many times we will not understand why or how or what brought us to these trials. But regardless, we cannot bury ourselves at the bottom of them in self-pity and lose any reason to hope. And we cannot try to rebuild the rubble one stone at a time by ourselves. We will end up exhausted and still broken. What we can do is bring God our ruins, let Him into the mess, and then say, "It's yours, bring me back to life." 

Whatever ruins you think are too big or too broken, bring them to God, I have a feeling He has some amazing plan for that pile of rubble. I know because I have seen it happen before with my own eyes. 

Love and prayers, 

Danielle