Broken Into Beautiful

I have a great life. I have a husband that I adore, and children that are happy, healthy, and so very loved. I have a job doing what I love, a roof over my head, and while not financial abundance, financial security. I have a great family, extended family, and church family. And except for the pesky blood pressure problem, I am relatively healthy. Because I feel so blessed, so content with my life, it is so easy to forget that really, under it all, I am broken. That it has not always been this way. Easy to forget the hurt, the pain, the struggles. The mistakes, the shame, the heartache.

And then come the reminders. The times when, like this weekend, where an innocent comment can bring it all back. Can make me feel, once again, that I am not good enough. Not deserving. Everything that I have tried so hard not to be. That all the feelings and emotions that I thought I had buried, worked so hard to erase or change, are still there underneath it all.

And I realize I am still broken...will probably always be, just a bit. I realize that there will probably never be a time when I can fully forget. I hope for it to be so, like it never happened, like my life has always been as it is now--full, happy, indeed beautiful. I pray for it to be so. Lord, let me forgive and forget. Let me judge my worth not by my past, by what others may have said or done, but by my worth to You.

But even so...God is good. Knows when my heart cries, knows when my heart needs a salve. Last weekend, we got our rehearsal CD for our Easter program. I didn't think to listen to it until today on the way to church, with only the little girls in the car with me and no one to complain about having to listen to it instead of the radio. And this was the first song that I heard, even though it is the third on the disc. And it spoke to my heart. The kind of reminder I needed to let me know that regardless of what has happened in the past, that God can turn broken into beautiful. That He has.