LIKE A DIAMOND

Today, I decided to write about why my new blog is called “Beauty From Brokenness” and the story behind this ministry. I’ve always loved writing and sharing Jesus’ love with people. One day I decided to write an encouraging letter to a stranger just to brighten their day and share some Jesus with them. I loved doing it so much and felt like that was something I should do, so I started writing anonymous letters more often to people all over the country. Eventually, I created an email so that people could get in contact if they had questions. I have a ministry mindset so Bible studies, blogs, and all that are my kind of thing. I prayed for a name for the ministry I found myself in the midst of starting.

Now that I look back on this, it’s kind of crazy how it all happened.

Sometimes God opens doors and we walk right through them without even fully realizing it until we look back.

I go through a lot of different seasons or chapters in life, and sometimes I don’t realize right away that I’m finishing one chapter and transitioning to the next. God gives me words or phrases that kind of serve as a title for the chapter or season I’m currently in, or one I’m about to walk into. I’ll talk more about some of my chapters of life in future blogs. Today though, I’ll just write about the chapter in my life when God spoke beauty from brokenness over me. Last December I was in a season that I called “Who Am I?”. It was one of the more difficult chapters for me to walk through, and there were a lot of tears shed. It was at the end of this chapter that I felt the Lord put on my heart “beauty from brokenness”. This has been the season that I’ve been walking in for the past several months. I’m learning to trust my Father more and more.

I’m watching Him in awe as He turns “victims to victories, trials to triumphs, messes to messages, and tests into testimonies.”

I’ll back up a little and get back to the story. As I was praying for a name for this new letter outreach thing that was beginning, God prompted me with a question.

I asked myself, “What has God done in my life?”

The answer came almost immediately. He’s brought beauty from brokenness.

My life has been broken.

My heart has been broken.

My plans and dreams have fallen to the ground in shattered pieces.

I’ve experienced pain from broken relationships.

Yet somehow, God has brought beauty from all of it.

Even the wording is very specific and important to me. It’s beauty from brokenness rather than brokenness to beauty. The reason that the wording means so much to me is that, to Jesus, our mess has always been beautiful because He can see the whole picture. When all we see is our broken shattered pieces, He sees the finished masterpiece. He has a plan for every little detail in our lives.

When I think of beauty from brokenness, I relate it to a diamond. When you find a diamond that’s covered in dirt, it often looks like a rock. It’s dirty and isn’t pretty. But you know that after it’s been cleaned and polished, it will be gorgeous and it will shine. It always was beautiful under the dirt, we just couldn’t see it yet. That’s how I see our lives. Our sin makes us dirty, but Jesus looks past our dirt. He washes us white as snow and calls us beautiful. Jesus always see the beauty that is sometimes hidden. We just have to trust Him that He’s cleaning the diamonds in His timing and eventually, we’ll be able to see the beauty too.

I’ll end with one of my favorite verses. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, “He has made everything beautiful in its time.”