my testimony

“Sometimes what seemed like rejection was actually your rescuing”

A couple weeks ago during a night of worship at my church I was asked to share my story. Some of you may know it, some of you may not. I have been able to share it with a lot of people, but I have yet to write it all out into words until now. God has really been pressing my heart to do so because I don’t want one person to feel like they’re alone in this world. I don’t want anyone thinking something is wrong with them because they’ve been in failed relationships or experienced heartbreak or questioned everything in life. Questioned their existence, questioned God, or even questioned their worth. That is the biggest lie we can believe when we’re hurting. No ones life is “perfect” no matter how great everything looks. The person you think has it all, has experienced pain just as you are. So I share my story so that I can possibly give hope to even just one person. So that I can tell just one person that you aren’t alone and remind you that things do get better...

To start off, just a little background on my life, I was raised in church, raised in a christian home, and went to a christian school. I was always that girl who strived to make the right choices. I never was, nor thought I was perfect but I did believe I was setting myself up for a so called “perfect” life. I always tried to do good, and if I do good my life will be good… right? WRONG. My biggest lesson I have had to learn has been life is not as good as our works. We don’t make good choices therefore life is “perfect”. Because if life was dependent on how much good we did that would mean every failure would count against us. God doesn’t judge us by our works. He doesn’t love us anymore when we do good, He doesn’t love us any less when we mess up! So with that said, we all go through crap because we live in a fallen world. Not every bad thing that you go through means you screwed up. Sometimes we go through things in life that have no reflection of us but of someone else. Even if it is a consequence of something you did there is still hope. You still have value. You still have purpose. Nothing and no one can take that from you. Last year I experienced a really hard season of trying to figure out where I screwed up and that is when God gave me this revelation.

I found my “perfect” life crashing down right in front of me, as it had been for a while. I was living my worst nightmare, divorce. The thought of divorce has always freaked me out, I remember always thinking there was no way I could ever live through it. I literally thought I would die if I had to walk through it. And there, I found myself in the middle of an unfaithful marriage of 4 years and a little baby girl. Living the life I never thought would be mine. I felt more pain than I have ever imagined I could, so much heartbreak, there were so many days I did not want to go on. I had so much confusion from simply trying to figure out, why me? I had days of questioning if God even still cared about me. Had my entire life been lived in vain?

But there, in the middle of it all, I found a very gracious and loving God. Who was there upholding me every second. Catching every tear. When I look back all I see is grace. His grace carrying me through. Helping me find clarity, find peace in the midst of my storm. In the middle of questioning everything about God I found myself diving deeper and deeper in to Him. Experiencing His presence more and more each day. He began showing me a lot of the things I’ve previously wrote about like finding your worth in Him, not people, not relationships. He began to show me that I could live through divorce because he was and always has been my life source. He gave me purpose not my marriage. I found that losing my “perfect” life didn’t make or break me because my God is unwavering. I was still me, just a version of me I never thought I'd see. And today I can sit here and say it's my favorite version of me. “Bless the thing that broke you down and cracked you open because the world needs you open.” Truly think about how much more beautiful your story is when you have endured some of the darkest days. Your perspective is majorly changed when you go through losing what you thought was everything but then realizing there’s still beauty left. How much deeper can you love having experienced heartbreak because you see what a risk love is but you still choose love over fear. God has changed my perspective on life completely as a whole walking through what I did. Things that once mattered to me I see are so useless now, like worrying about my life looking a certain way. Because now I see that there is no standard set up for how each persons story should look, we just set up expectations in our head and when things fail we beat ourselves up and tell ourselves we screwed up somewhere. But what if in those moments we just accepted where we were in life and everything about how it looks, the good the bad. Accepted ourselves for where we were and considered it “perfect”.

What if we stepped back and reminded ourselves that God is still God. He hasn’t changed. He hasn’t left us. He has a plan and all of this is a part of it! He sees the beginning to the end, He knew that you would walk through this and He will turn it for good, there is reason and purpose for it. That thought alone is where I derived a lot of my peace from in the middle of my circumstance, and its something I still have to remind myself of on hard days (which still do happen by the way). When you are pursuing God you don’t step out of His will, and no one can pull you from it. He knows the mistakes other people will make, He knows the mistakes you will make. So don’t let yourself believe for one second that He is surprised by your situation. He’s still got you in His hands, He is still good. God created each of our stories uniquely and beautifully to shine a light in this world. Your trials aren’t just about you. Don’t play the victim of your trial, use it. Use if for God, use it for good. Grow from it. Bloom from it. I have grown so passionate about people through my storm. I have been able to experience so much freedom by just opening up and letting God use me. It’s been the most amazing feeling to talk to women who feel broken and being able to say “hey, me too”, but look you can make it through. Within my first week back to work at Mac I had a lady come in who was apparently an emotional mess. She told me at first that she just needed new makeup to feel prettier but she ended up telling me that her and her husband of 20 years had just separated, she felt lost. She felt like she couldn’t go on, she said she didn’t even know who she was anymore. Wow. Talk about a God moment. Talk about a moment of purpose for me. As she was speaking a huge smile came to my face because I was so excited to be able to tell her what I had just walked through TOO. I just listened to her go on and on and finally when she stopped I just looked at her and said, thats crazy, me too and I had those exact same thoughts! She looked at me in amazement and was like well you look like you’re doing great, and right there in that moment I got to make that connection with her and share the love God had shown me months before. She left so grateful and thankful that I had shared with her.

That is what it’s all about. That is why we exist here on earth. To be a light, to be a neck to hug, to be an encouragement to the broken. I love love love getting those real, raw connections with other people, they are so healing even to myself. You are never alone, your life is not a screw up. Keep pushing through, You are loved, you have worth and God has a purpose for your life that is greater than what you ever thought. So forgive what broke you, because guess what, you really aren’t that broken after all. You know why? Jesus. He was broken for us so that we could experience healing and keep on moving forward and living. Life doesn’t always turn out how you thought it would, however I have found it turns out much better when you trust in God.