Broken, yet healing & hopeful

This year has been one of the toughest of my life, and the last few months have been brutal on my soul, yet I always hold on to hope. Laying out my life in writing has been healing and yet the hardest thing I have ever done. I know that God will use it for His glory and so the ministry is just beginning. Pouring out my soul has been completely draining, yet the belief and support of my family and life group has been like medicine to my weary heart. Much of what I wanted and pursued this past year, I have found, did not want me, which left me clinging to the One I needed.

I have seen people torn apart, I have been torn apart, and I have had to grip God with white knuckles to keep from lying flat. Listening as a co-worker shares with me that her 28 years of marriage have been washed away by her husband's three affairs and now divorce. I've watched a family of eight lean so hard on the one that his back physically fails him, yet he doesn't have the money to seek healing. I had to send him home, a grown man standing before me bawling asking for my help. A marriage of twenty years gone overnight, which leaves a woman pleading to me in tears for a job to support her and her eight year old son. Her van broke down in the parking lot as she pulled in, she says she hasn't worked in twenty years, yet she needs a job today or she won't know what to do for tomorrow. Three people, three stories, the last three days at Panera, many broken hearts.

I have cried much the last several days, yet I remain hopeful. Below are the words from a Lifehouse song that fit into my soul with healing harmony.

Hanging on another day
Just to see what, you will throw my way
And I'm hanging on, to the words you say
You said that I will, I'll be okay
The broken light on the freeway
Left me here alone
I may have lost my way now
But I haven't forgotten my way home

I'm falling apart
I'm barely breathing
With a broken heart
That's still beating
In the pain
There is healing
In your name
I find meaning
So I'm holding on
Barely holding on to you (I'm still holding on)