Mom and Dad are Dead

Monday

“Mom and Dad are dead and both my legs are broken.”

The words my brother spoke to me when I woke up in the hospital. 

I was 15.

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.  Psalms 34:18

Obviously, God didn’t cause my parents death at the hands of a drunk driver. God did however; arrange my life so that I would be smothered in His word for the next few years.  At the time, my living arrangements were not ideal, nor was I facing the obvious things I should be confronting.  But I was reading my Bible every day and learning about God while building a foundation for the rest of my life.  

In a situation where everything I’d known and loved was gone, there was no perfect answer.  So I had to accept the “not so ideal” scenarios and praise God for the good stuff.

When we are broken because we are hurting and life is hard, we must move forward one just one day at a time, at times, one hour at a time.    Sometimes it can be impossible to see much further than this.  Sometimes, you may have to block out the pain and push it down for a while, but only a short while. 

Facing the brokenness of your life is how you grow and learn.  If we are erasing the pain with drugs, alcohol, sex, work, religion or ???, we are only delaying the recovery and lessons to be learned.  The growth we experience in times of pain are undeniably relevant to our future well being.  We must learn the lesson before we can move forward.   The longer you delay the pain, the longer your delay the healing.

What ever the reason is that you are broken, God can always be found in the remains of your life.  But, you must be looking, or He will not be found.  Without God, you will wonder around broken but never getting put back together again.

Lord, when bad things happen in my life, help me to face them head on.  Help me to rely on you God and not other things. Amen