First of all Happy 4th
July to all in the U.S.A! May you have something to celebrate and be thankful
for and may God make this truly your Independence
(Freedom!) Day!
These past few weeks I have been feeling new levels of
brokenness in my heart. I am not sure if it is the pressure of all the
difficulties and challenges I currently have in my life, hormones or a mixture
of it all. But almost every day I find what lies ahead too much for more:
physically, emotionally, mentally … and I turn to God.
Matthew 21: 44 says: “Anyone who falls on this stone will be
broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.”
Luke 20: 18 says: “Everyone who falls on that stone will be
broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.”
The Scriptures are talking about Jesus. I have found that as
I have approached God with my weakness and pain I have had a choice: either
surrender it to Him and lay myself on the altar daily – offering up my pain and
heartache in worship to Him. Or resist and allow my circumstances to crush me.
I have chosen to lay myself on the altar, to be a living sacrifice (Romans 12:
1). But I can honestly say that I have never known such depths of loneliness,
of brokenness, barrenness and heart literally aching as I have in recent days.
But encouragement, and God can be found in the strangest of
places. I happened to catch some of this year’s Glastonbury festival on TV, and the end of
the set by Adele on the Pyramid Stage. She spoke about when she wrote the song
‘Someone Like You’:
“This song changed my life. I wrote it when I was obviously
miserable (that’s nothing new is it, we all know that!). And I wrote it, and …
I wanted a friend in this song. I wanted to feel not so alone, and within a
couple of hours of starting to write it on my own, feeling very sorry for
myself (I had a bad cold, I was running a bath, all that – trying to get
better). And it did it’s job for me. And the song in general, kinda helped me
fix myself a little bit. And then, when I started playing it to people that I
know and that I love, they started reacting to this song very differently to
anything else I’d ever written.
And then I
did it on Jools Holland (a music TV show here in the UK), and then … this ball started getting
bigger and bigger and then started rolling. And then I did it at the Brit
Awards and then from that moment it completely changed my life. And then
nothing’s ever been the same ever since. In amazing ways, and sometimes in
strange and weird ways. But this song is the one I feel like if anyone ever
remembers me in years to come, that this might be the song they do.”
She went on to say that that moment, on the stage at
Glastonbury, was not only the best moment of her completely amazing and
stupendous career (my description, she wouldn’t refer to herself like that!),
but of her life.
So you see, from great pain and our lowest moments, can come
the very thing that changes our lives.
I will write more about that, and the encouragements that
God keeps leaving for me – almost like a little trail of breadcrumbs for me to
follow, or energy shots and manna to keep me going, soon. But for all those out
there who may read this, who have some pain, who maybe stumble across this page
by accident – know that it’s not an accident, that perhaps God just brought you
here on purpose to speak to you. Perhaps what you are going through, although
not from God, may be used by Him and be just the very thing you need to bring
out the beauty and gift within.
Perhaps I write this, as Adele did, to ‘find a friend’ in
the words. But if you feel pain, or feel alone, or are hurting or face any form
of difficulty – know that you are not alone and know that you have a friend. I
can understand. And much more than that, God understands, loves you and cares
for you – and has a great plan for your life and to get you out of those
difficult circumstances. (Jeremiah 29: 11)
As a friend of mine wrote on the beach and the photographed,
at a Christian conference:
As ever, be blessed : )
