In response to Ann Voskamp's "Dear Me Letter" post and challenge
Dear me,
Above all, remember God is faithful. His mercies are new every morning, and His compassions never fail. He is faithful, and His faithfulness is great. He is good and kind, trustworthy and true.
You listened to a writer recently who quoted another writer, who said, "Every writer only has one theme, and mine is love." That got you thinking, what is your one theme?
What you're realizing and don't really want to accept is that your theme is brokenness, or perhaps better, the sufficiency of God's grace in brokenness. Your imagination keeps returning to the idea of the kintsugi Christian, a broken person mended with gold, more beautiful after the breaking than before. It is a beautiful idea, but the cost of such a testimony frightens you. So much brokenness already. So many losses. Is that to be the pattern always? If His golden beauty in the soul's dark night is the theme of your song, is breaking and mending, breaking and mending, breaking and mending to be the rhythm of all the days of your weary Shadowlands pilgrimage?
I don't know that. Loss is engraved so indelibly in this postlapsarian life, as it was on our Savior's (and is even now in ascended, nail-scarred glory); such a rhythm is a distinct possibility.
But I know this: if such is your calling, your testimony, God will be faithful in it. He will unfold joys and beauties in the brokenness that would not be yours otherwise. The grace and courage and strength will be there when you need it, though likely not before. The fearful imaginings of impending losses, realized in full, omit the imaginings of the sweet presence of God in their midst.
What's more, consider the outcome of such breaking and mending, breaking and mending, breaking and mending. Every cycle will make you more of gold and less of clay. Every breaking will cause His light and glory to shine through you more brightly, until your journey is complete and you are like Him when you see Him face to face.
Courage, dear heart. Life is hard. There will be more death-shadowed valleys before the end. But Christ is worthy. He is worthy, and He is with you. You will never be alone or abandoned by Him.
Dive ever deeper into His presence in His Word, and soar ever higher into His presence in prayer. If brokenness is to be your theme, let Him be your song in the house of your pilgrimage.
You can trust God with this.
cm
#DearMeLetter #SummerOfJournalling
