I always assumed that if I just kept trying hard enough, my life would hold together. I couldn’t imagine things falling apart, so I tried to grasp everything tighter and tighter. I have Jesus in my heart, and I just knew He wouldn’t let me fail. I knew He’d help me hold it all together.
But God’s ways are higher than our ways, and what I thought was supposed to happen wasn’t His plan. Soon, my façade of control crumbled. Exploded, really. Years of untreated mental illness, financial struggles, two beautiful daughters, each with an autism diagnosis, strained family relationships and a failing marriage… exploded. In ways I can’t even begin to explain or describe, my life very unexpectedly came crashing down around me. I lost everything: half of my time with my children, my home, my marriage, my business I worked so hard to build, a dear friend. Everything…or what was MY idea of everything.
See, I didn’t ask God to break me. I asked God to just help me keep pushing through these messes. To survive. I truly thought I could keep it all under control and things would have to get better. And eventually I thought that I could do it on my own and stopped asking God for anything altogether.
So when God allowed all of this to crumble—to literally break me of everything I knew—I was so incredibly lost. I had nowhere else to turn and nothing else to hide behind. There was no pretending any longer. It was all gone. So I finally had to hand God the rubble and say, “I’m at the end of me.” I remember that day. Vividly. It was the first time I actually had to put all my trust in Him, because I literally didn’t know what the next hour would hold. I remember lying there in tears, telling Jesus I finally understood. I don’t hold anything in my hands. I can’t force, control, wish or will anything into existence that isn’t God’s plan.
Paul, the writer of Ephesians 2:10, says: “For we are God’s masterpiece. He created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the things He planned for us long ago.”
It’s extremely difficult to trust that God wants to turn our messes into His masterpiece, right in the midst of loss, divorce, illness, or whatever is breaking around you right now. But what I’ve been learning over the past few months is that maybe God has something way better for me than what I thought was “everything”. He knew the things I thought were my plan weren’t His plan. When I thought my life was over, He was telling me, “The life I want for you can finally begin”.
Jesus can’t do his work through us if we won’t let Him in to break us of what is keeping us from Him. Whether it’s pride, control, selfishness or simply not trusting Him with an area of our life, it’s not quick and painless for God to work these things out in us. But He cannot make us into the masterpieces He intended if we are hardened in our ways and against Him. God will not ever leave us, but He will go to great lengths to remake us. And that might not be pretty or painless for us, but what He wants for us is so much more than we can even imagine for ourselves. As dangerous as it feels to ask, what do you need to ask God to break you of so that He can remake you? When we trust God’s promise that He can make something beautiful from broken pieces, we start to experience the true peace and joy He wants for us right now. It is so much easier to live from this place of knowing that God planned things for me long ago. He just wants us to respond with humility, trust and faith that He holds it all.