To say that it’s been a trying couple of years for my family would be an understatement. Just a few years after my father passed away unexpectedly, my younger brother passed. A week later, my grandmother passed away, followed soon after by my business partner. It seemed that God was trying to teach our family something about loss.
Back in September, my oldest sister called to tell me she and her family had lost their home to a fire. It was completely destroyed. I could sense that familiar spirit of depression in her voice. How much more could our family take?
My sister, her husband and her teenage daughter needed a place to live right away. The three of them had to move into her mother-in-law’s small house which felt like they were being totally uprooted.
I said to her, “You never know why this happened. Maybe God is trying to gift you something. God may be about to call your mother-in-law home (she had been sick off and on for a couple of years). Maybe the loss of your home and moving in next door with her is God’s gift to you so you can spend more time with her before she passes.”
Sharing encouraging words with her made me think about the ashes in my own life. I’ve experienced great loss in so many different ways over the years. Dreams that I’d prayed to manifest have turned to dust and I am now in a season of discomfort. But because I know that “all things work together for the good of them who love the Lord,” I had to think: what is God trying to gift to me in this season of loss? Is God allowing this heartache in my life to draw me closer to Him and mature me in some part of my character? I prayed: God, help me to see the beauty in this chaos!
Then God revealed something beautiful to me: not everything that happens to me is really about me at all. What if the things I go through are really for God to reach someone else through me?
Now that I think about it, what if God’s gift wasn’t to my sister at all, but was an answer to her mother-in-law’s prayer to not be alone in her final days? What an awesome gift for her mother-in-law to feel the love and support of her family as she took her final breath! And how amazing it is that my sister and brother-in-law are able to say that they took care of mom until the end. Despite the tragedy of their loss, they each received God’s blessings in the storm.
We will never understand exactly why God allows us to go through certain hardships. Although there are so many unanswered questions, in one thing I am confident: God says in Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know the plans that I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you; plans to give you hope and a future.” When everything else fails, God’s promises never fail.
The guarantee of hope and a future doesn’t mean there won’t be hard times. It doesn’t mean there won’t be fires. It doesn’t mean there won’t be destruction or heartbreak. God’s promises mean that there will be beauty in the ashes, and that’s more than enough for me.
