Broken & Beautiful

As I've said before, if you ask the Lord to show you things in your heart, and you really mean it, He will show you. In the last few months, but mostly in the last two weeks, God has been showing me some of the hardest things of my life. Things that, for so long, I didn't want to see. And while it hurts so, so much, I'm also grateful. Because I know that God's way is best. Recently, He gave me a picture/vision to give me some revelations about myself.

I'm standing in a room. The only thing in it is a tall table across the room with a beautiful jar on top of it. This jar represents my life. As I look at it, the table starts to shake, making the jar wobble. I think to myself, "That jar can't fall! That's my life!" So I run to catch it. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get to it in time. The jar falls to the floor and shatters into a million pieces. I stand over my shattered life, stunned. Then panic sets in. I fall to my knees and start frantically picking up the pieces. There are just so many. Suddenly, God says, "Eryn, stop." I pick up a few more pieces, and then I stop. He says, "I'm going to be the one to pick up the pieces of your life. Not you. And I'm going to pick up the pieces that I want, and leave the ones I don't want." As I watch Him slowly pick up pieces and leave others, I say to Him painstakingly, "Lord! You can't leave that one! It's crucial to me! To who I am!" He looks at me and says, "Do you trust Me?" And I say without hesitation, "No!"

And that's where it ends. I have gone over and over that picture/vision in my mind. It completely confirms my need for control. I've been trying to play God for so long. (And then I sit and wonder why things haven't turned out right...? Really?) Me and the Lord have been working through that already. It shows me that I don't trust the Lord as much as I need to, which we're also working on. I am so humbled that He'd show me in such a beautiful and obvious way. And His revelations don't stop there. I've been listening to a sermon series by Anthony Chapmen about living in the New Covenant. He references the times throughout the Bible that God talks about "newness" or "making things new." The definition of "new" is "of a kind now existing or appearing for the first time; unfamiliar or strange." It's something we've never seen before, tasted before, experienced before. It's something our brains can't imagine. He goes on to say, though, that so many Christians, when they read about the "new," they think of only what they've already experienced. They think of what they can compare it to. So they think, "Oh, it's going to look like this did, only a little different." But that's not what it is. That would just make it a newer version of the old. When God says He's going to make something new, it means that He's going to do something that we've never seen, tasted, touched, felt, experienced before. Ever. See, whenever I thought about the vision and God putting my "jar," or life, back together, I always imagined Him putting it back together just as it was before, as if He just took some glue and put it back together as best He could. Sure, it would have some pieces missing, and cracks, but He was going to put something else in those holes, and that's what was going to make it "new." But that's not what He's going to do. He's going to make an entirely different jar that won't look anything like the last one.

Scary? In some ways, yes.
Good? Absolutely.

That's the good thing about brokenness. God always puts us back together. And when we trust Him with the process, we always come out better and stronger and snazzier. ;) It's hard. Most definitely. But I won't have it any other way. Control is not mine. I don't want it.




The Best Is Yet To Come...