One of the most impacting ways God brings beauty from our lives is when we share our own stories. To share your story, your story of your child, your grief, and your God, will help another mom to know she is not alone. It will help her know grace is available for her too. It will help her know God cares, God understands, God loves, and God will walk with her. Your story will give her hope. It will bring light into her darkness.
My grandson, Evan, sat on my lap at a Christmas Eve service – the very first one in our new building. The candles everyone that was junior high and older were holding, were one by one being lit. And some of those lit candles were finding out that the barely perceptible wind of the air conditioning was attempting to extinguish them. Evan knew “our” candle was being threatened and he carefully cupped his little hands around the flame. So many lives are like that flickering flame, and they need the protection, the encouragement, the help of someone else. Someone who has walked a similar path. Someone who may still be journeying, but they are farther down the road. Someone like you who understands not only “the mess” but understands too that God is bigger than our messes.
Someone like you who is willing to tell her story. Someone like you who can help someone else feel not quite so alone, and not so different. Someone like you who knows the incredible, transforming love and power and grace of God. Someone like you who knows no life is too messy, too tragic, too broken, too beaten up, too sinful – for the awesome grace of God. Your story offers hope. Your story offers forgiveness. Your story offers peace. Your story offers a way through. Your story offers God to someone who may never have seen Him that way before.
No one can refute your story – it’s yours. It’s true. It’s a dynamic testimony to the truth of God and all He encompasses. The only thing that enlarges it is when you tell someone else the incredible impact God has made on your life. God gives opportunities to those who are willing – and He gives courage and peace and the words to say when He says, “go.” Willingness coupled with a sensitivity to others and a sensitivity to the leading of God will let you know when, and how, and to whom. If you know how the grace and love and power of God has touched your life, then you have a story to tell. And your light, and your child’s light will continue to shine.
– Bev
(Related Bible reading: Psalm 18:1-6, 28)
