How to Be Grateful Even for the Broken Things
[This post is featured as part of Begin Within: A Gratitude Series, hosted by Twyla Dawn Franz at The Uncommon Normal.]
It’s been fifteen years since I learned that God doesn’t throw broken things away. That instead, He gives them value and beauty and purpose.
The truth is, for a long time, I didn’t know I was actually broken. I loved Jesus dearly. I worked hard to do what I thought He wanted me to do, and if I’m being really honest, I even felt kind of good about how I was doing in that effort. I brought Him with me through all the seasons — those brutal teen years, the I’m-so-wise college ones, the striving-in-my-early career ones, and into my early marriage. Things hummed along.
My new husband and I went to church from the beginning, missing very few Sundays. We bought a house. Our careers grew. We dreamed dreams. Then, nine years into our marriage, we were blindsided by the exposure of quiet sin that sat deep in our marriage. Our hearts both broke open.
How did God let this happen? Hadn’t He been with us?