God can bring blessing and growth into our lives through seemingly impossible and heartbreaking circumstances. Today's testimony is from Jamie who blogs at Walkin' in High Cotton. I know that some of you will be able to identify with Jamie and her sudden tragic loss. My prayer is that you will be encouraged by the blessings she received through a seemingly hopeless situation.
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As Gold is Tried
It was a normal Saturday evening…our 20-month-old daughter was in bed, and we were sitting on the couch enjoying the quiet. I was complaining about 1st trimester miseries, and my husband was suggesting that I just tuck myself and my little baby bump into bed early when the phone rang. My parents had been in a motorcycle accident and I needed to come home right now. I was 4 hours away. Right now, they all said. Right now. I grabbed a diaper bag and we strapped Ruby in her seat still asleep in her little sheep pajamas. We took nothing else except the dogs and our wallets.
It didn’t matter.
I became a 27-year-old wife, mother, and orphan before we even pulled out of our driveway, although I didn’t know it until several hours later.
I see now, from so far away, that the time from May 20, 2006 until after our 3rd child was born in January 2008, was my time of being sifted. Threshed like ripe golden grain. Would I be His wheat? Would I be a seed worth planting? Would I bring forth a new creation from the old? Rise from the ashes as a phoenix of legend? Or would I blow away, as useless chaff, across an empty winter field?
And why? Why must I be a motherless mother? Why must I be a new wife and mother without her father’s support or her mother’s wise counsel to help her grow into her role? Why must I be abruptly, completely, forever rent asunder from my childhood, all the warmth of a lifetime’s traditions, holidays, habits…home?
I cannot talk of hidden blessings, because the blessings I have to share were not hidden. My old life was closed, chapter and verse, on May 20th. Everything before that is a memory, and everything after is a new story, unfamiliar, perhaps, but not hidden. Maybe “private” blessings would be more accurate for my story. It’s not easy to share the clarity, the conviction--the thirst for truth that came over me--the connection I found in the honesty of the Bible. Answers to questions so deep some people don’t want to ask them. Answers so true some people don’t want to hear them. “How do I find joy in these trials?” “Why do I have to?” “Where do I find home?” “How do I replace what my children have lost for them?” “For myself?”
The more I search for answers, the more peace God brings to my heart. His Word speaks to my soul… reminding me I’m not alone, that He has the answers, that I’m not the first or the last to suffer, to fail, to receive forgiveness, redemption, revival.
“And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith the Lord, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein. And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The Lord is my God.” (Zechariah 13:8-9, KJV)
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I'm so grateful for Jamie's willingness to share her POWERFUL story! I know I was blessed by it. Hop over to her blog, Walkin' in High Cotton to get to know her better.