2019 began with my family spending a lot of time together in close quarters. My husband had just been laid off from his job, and I was recovering from a major hip surgery. We found ourselves adrift in a sea of pain. Multiple griefs hit in hard succession–my brother’s death, my husband’s layoff, a world of church hurt, financial challenges, and me undergoing a major surgery. All of these hardships hit fast and hard within a three-month timeframe. Family structures and rhythms were completely thrown out of whack, and we wounded one another from a place of deep hurt. 

I went silent on my blog, putting my pen down. This silence was borne from a deep unhealth, a spiritual lack in my deepest being as I turned away from the Lord in the midst of my heartache. Rather than clinging to Him, I sought to distance myself from Him. In choosing to neglect the good medicine of the Word, my festering wounds turned foul and bitter. 2019 was the year that I spent nursing anger and bitterness rather than cultivating the good fruit of righteousness. I felt justified in turning a deaf ear to God because he had “dealt bitterly with me.” He had caused me this pain. He had chosen not to prevent it. 

As 2020 began, I recognized that something needed to change. My wrong thinking had become deeply ingrained and was affecting many areas of my life. At the start of each year I choose a word as the theme for the year, and I was drawn to the word “Healing” for 2020. It seems so ironic now that, in a year that was crippled by a pandemic of sickness, my life would experience such deep healing. 

When quarantine began in March of 2020, it felt as though God was mercifully and kindly giving me and my family a redo. We once again found ourselves home together for prolonged periods of time. But this time, instead of wounding one another, we leaned into the hard work of restoration. 2020 was the year that I acknowledged my brokenness and recognized my need to turn to the great Physician and Healer of my soul. 

My healing began as I learned to press into Christ in the midst of the pain, leaning into the pain rather than trying to flee from it. As I read through the Prophets, this theme of healing became clear to me in a new way. The wounding that comes from God is never capricious or born from a desire to see his children come to harm. Rather, God wounds us in order to reveal our sin, lead us to repentance, and pour abundant grace upon us as he restores us to himself. His patience is great and his love is everlasting.

Even in our turning away, God offers an invitation for His faithless people to return. And what is the result of returning to the Shepherd and Overseer of our souls?

Joy

Gladness

Rejoicing

Thanks

Blessing

Worship

God used 2020 to strip away bitterness, reveal sin, and to bring redemptive healing to my broken places. I have learned the beauty of the truth that God is with me. He does  not abandon His children in the midst of their pain. True healing began when I recognized that God walks with me in the midst of my pain. When I ponder the ungraspable enormity of the fact that Christ willingly chose to enter into the midst of human suffering––not shying away from it, but embracing it joyfully––I can no longer believe the lie that I am alone. Christ is the great High Priest who sympathizes with every weakness, understands the depths of human pain, and advocates for me before the Father. He is also the Returning King who is gloriously resurrected, has conquered death, and will return to bring his children into a place of eternal abundance. 

The enemy wants us to think that we are alone in our hurt, that no one else has ever experienced it, and that we would be better off without God. But the truth of God with Us combats the enticing hiss of the serpent’s lies. God so desires to be with us that he put on the limitations of the weak frame of human bones and lived among us. God so desires to be with us that He has stepped into the reality of our pain and brokenness. God so desires to be with us that He has offered a way of redemption by way of the cross. 

You are not alone in your pain. God walks with you in it, cares deeply for you in the midst of it, and offers you healing through the precious blood of Christ. This is the good news of the gospel. You are not alone.

2019 was the year of stripping, leaving my life looking like naked branches that appear dead as they sway in the harsh Winter wind. In order to make room for new growth, the old must be fully stripped away. But as the warmth of Spring rises, those branches that appear dead begin to shoot out green whispers of new growth before slowly erupting into the full bloom of radiant life. 2020 was a year for green shoots to slowly begin emerging. My prayer is that 2021 will be a year of blossoming as I press on to know the Lord.