“Someday, your world may fall apart all around you and there will be nothing you can do about it.”
This was my response to a women’s ministry leader who blindsided me in a coffee shop with quick and brutal judgement over the state of my marriage. Let’s be clear—She had absolutely zero idea about why my marriage was in crisis. None.
Still, she felt confident, and entitled, to condemn me. I was already hanging onto my life by a thread. My heart had been broken and re-broken so many times that I was limping through my days, doing my best to love and parent my kids well, and cultivate a fledgling writing career, when I had nothing to give anymore.
I remember feeling like a thin-stretched thread of spun glass, so fragile that the slightest tremor might shatter me. Now, here this woman was, sitting across from me, dropping the anvil of blame and shame on my wounded heart.
It was one of the most profoundly painful moments of my life. As soon as I escaped that coffee shop, I broke. I began crying and didn’t stop for almost 24 hours. It was the last hit I could take.
Since that time, my world has fallen apart all around me more than once. Each time it happens, it feels like life will never be okay again. But, somehow, I have smiled again. Somehow, I have found joy on the other side of the breaking.
My friend, if that is where you are today, hold on. May the God of all Comfort wrap you in his tender embrace. May you know the peace that passes all understanding. May you relinquish your desperate grasping for the illusion of control that you have believed will save you.
Sometimes, the world falls apart. But we have this hope—we are beautifully, eternally loved by a God who restores.
God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging.
Psalm 46:1-3