Thursday, June 21, 2012

The Resurrected Family Part 1: Ponderings of Restoration

I am convinced that God is nothing short of amazing. He is able to take the most broken, destroyed, thrown away things and turn them into something more beautiful than could ever be imagined. All I have to do is take a look at my life, at the true testimony that God gave me to see how miraculously He works in our lives. I want for nothing more than for the life I live to glorify Him.
To say that I grew up in a dysfunctional home is to chip the iceberg. I remember how we would joke about how dysfunctional we were, like it would make it better, less dysfunctional, normal. I had no idea then, but the upbringing I received would effect me into adulthood. It left each of us with more wounds and scars than we could possibly imagine. Some how we became messed up beyond comprehension and our own ability to mend the hurts. Or at least it did me.

I ended up like a piece of broken pottery. Just shards of brokenness. Missing who know how many pieces. Some of my first memories were of this very brokenness. For a long time it was so painful to look back on those memories, all I could do was do my best to suppress them and pretend that they never happened.

In the end, our family finally ended up physically broken. My parents divorced, I had issues with each parent (my relationship with my Mom took the worst beating; we hardly spoke for nearly 3 years) and there grew to be a large gap, both physical and emotional, between my once close brother and I.

But He gives us more grace. God has been so good to bring me healing and restoration. The last few years especially. I have been freed from some mighty strong strongholds and have had countless bad feelings attached to countless bad memories wiped away by the very fingertips of the Lord. And I have seen how He restores.

God doesn't just restore. He RESTORES! Scripture is right when it says that He gives you double for your trouble. He not only will restore back what was lost, but will give you extras. These extras are not to reward you for getting through the hard stuff, but He gives them to us just because He loves us. I have never seen God's love more strongly than I have these last few years.

The restoration I've received has helped to change the person I am. I believe that you can not really have an encounter with God and not be permanently changed. And the change is always for the better. The change may be subtle and maybe only you or a few chosen will see it, but change none the less happens. A true relationship with God will always bring wholeness. A completeness that can't be found anywhere else. That is a true gift from God. For I was once like broken pottery, utterly ugly and useless with no true form; just fragments of what I was supposed to be. But, He is the ultimate Potter. He is the only Potter I know who can take broken pottery pieces and turn them back from fire-hardened pieces into soft, supple clay. And then take that clay and reform it into something more beautiful and more useful than before. Only He can make a life truly changed, every cell, from the inside out.

And the restoration that He brings is not just on the inside. It's on the outside, too. I can now boast that Christ is actively restoring all of my family. I have great relationships with both of my parents. My Mom, who I barely uttered a word to for so long, and I now talk multiple times each week, sometimes multiple times a day! And the deep conversations on Scripture we share, I wouldn't trade for all the yoga in India. My parents each remarried and I am so thankful that I those relationships are working toward restoration, too. I am very fortunate that my Step Dad is a shining example of what Christ can do when you let Him have His way. I am eagerly awaiting the day when my husband and my step father meet for the first time. And my distant brother is still physically distant, but God has opened doors of communication and we have spoken more in the last few weeks via a phone call and email than we have in the last few years. If that were not enough, God has brought another Godly couple into my life. I like to call them my Spiritual Parents. They are an extra mother and father, who, although we've only known each other for a short while, are like an extra set of parents to me. A couple who loves me unconditionally and I know I can call any time, day or night. God has used Rick and Eileen in so many ways to it encourage my walk with Christ. I often say I'm the luckiest girl in the world because I have 6 parents who love me unconditionally; all given to me by my Heavenly Father who loves me more than all 6 combined and multiplied by ten thousand. A far cry from a little girl who felt unlovable.

When I look back over my story, the story God gave me, I often have wondered why He had me go through such a difficult upbringing. Then when I see the good that He is doing in my life now, I understand why.  It amazes me what He has done. Only He can get the glory for this. And that's how I want it.

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