“I Understand Now”

“I think maybe I understand it now,” she whispered.” When it happened, I thought I’d lost everything I cared about. My dreams… my heart…they were all shattered into too many pieces to count, and I dared not dream again. And the painful days and nights that followed seemed so meaningless and hard then. But now, maybe now I understand a little bit of what it means that all things are beautiful in Your time.”

And here she paused, for though time and God can heal the most broken of hearts, sometimes there will still be little scars left to remind of the wounds that were there — and she was thinking of these scars now.

“I think it is like that first time I rode my bicycle down that big hill as a child. I lost control and couldn’t stop. I crashed hard, skinning my knees and my hands, and fell into the ditch full of blackberry brambles.  I had to crawl out all on my own and get back on the bike and ride home. It hurt and I didn’t like it, but I had to keep riding.  And when my brother crashed on the same hill and skinned his arms, I could help soothe away the pain so much easier, because I understood how much it hurt.”

And she smiled, remembering the way that childhood troubles suddenly seem so small when the reality of life begins to weigh on your shoulders.

“Can it be the same with my heart? I never wanted to know pain, I never wanted to know what it was to have a broken heart. I wouldn’t have dreamed of the heartache that life has brought me and the people I love. And I didn’t understand it then, but now can it be that this is one of the answers to the question of why?

For now, when I see the heartaches and pains of the people around me, I can do so much more than I could have done before, because I understand how much it hurts.  Because I’ve been there, too.

I’ve tasted and endured, and You brought me through every storm, and healed the wounds that went so deep.  And now, I think maybe I understand some of the beauty of pain. Because I have been broken, I can carry hope that someday, it will not always be so dark.”

“The broken pieces of my dreams, the pain and the confusion — they weren’t Your perfect plan, but the things with which Satan sought to destroy my faith.  You turned them for good. They were the tools You used to prepare me, to give me the chance to do more than I could have done before to be your hands to help to ease their heartache.”

Here she smiled through tears that sprung from a heart full of thankfulness, even out of the bitterness of the past.

“And that is worth the pain.”