“Lord, if you aren’t going to change this situation right now, please change me so I can handle it better.”

After a long season of unanswered prayer, of feeling weary from the praying for it, I whispered these words to God.

I can’t say that a switch was flipped at that moment and things suddenly got easier.   And I can’t say all the sorrow disappeared either.  But I can say letting go of what I held onto so tightly, unclenching my grip on the picture I had of what I thought our lives would look like, gave me some room to breathe.  To feel that it wasn’t all up to me to fix it.  Because it never was.

And with that shift in thinking into a posture of more humble submission, I did begin to handle things better.  There was space for joy and all the other emotions that had been crowded out by ache and sorrow.  And there was trust.  Trust that it was in His hands.

In Katherine and Jay Wolf’s book, Suffer Strong, they compared the breaking and healing of our hearts to kintsugi, a Japanese style of pottery in which broken pottery is repaired using gold lacquer.  This way of mending pottery is unique because it doesn’t try to cover up the brokenness, but honors the breaking by highlighting the repairs in such a way that it is stronger and even more valuable because of its history.

“He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”  (Col 1:17)  God is our hope and our refuge, who heals and redeems our brokenness.

Lord Jesus, you who are close to the brokenhearted and save those who are crushed in spirit, I give thanks for the grace you bestow upon me each day.  Amen.