The last time I posted I mentioned that I would write about the experience I had on our school retreat. Since I find myself at the airport with a 2 hour delay on my flight, I am going to take this opportunity to write about that experience. I’d rather be on the plane but at least I have my computer and will do my best to make the most of the situation. I will actually probably make this into several posts (since I have the time) and then post them on various days.
So….here we go….the retreat….
It seems like so long ago that we went on that little getaway and so much has happened since even that time. Yet it is important to share because it was an important moment in my relationship with the Lord and I believe it is beneficial for me to process in this manner. To even begin to tell you part of what happened I must first go back several years to a conversation I had had with a friend regarding how divorce affects a family.
My friend was also raised in a household that was affected by divorce and later went on to give his heart and life to the Lord. He had experienced some similar issues in his adult life as I had and we found that we would could relate to, comfort, and encourage one another better than many others has been able to (up to that point). During that time he shared an analogy that had helped him to better understand his family and himself. It helped me greatly, also. Here is the analogy:
Picture a shelf with a group of glasses sitting upon it. The shelf represents the marriage and each glass represents an individual in the family. If the shelf breaks, that is, the parents get divorced, all of the glasses fall. All of the glasses break. Do they all break exactly the same? No! Some may shatter. Some make break into only a few distinct pieces. Either way, no two will break in exactly the same way. So it is with the people in a family of divorce. Every single person is wounded from the experience, but the way it impacts each will be different and unique (depending on a variety of factors).
I have pondered this idea on many occasions and the Holy Spirit has spoken to me through it often over the years. During the retreat He brought my mind back to once again. In this instance He, basically, made me realize that I am a broken vessel that I have tried time and again to repair through my own striving and logic and strategies. Even though they have been things I had done were done as “the Christian thing do” and with the best of intentions behind them. He went on to show me that if I had broken an actual glass no amount of glue I used could put it back together in such a way as to ever be used again without some sort of ill effect. For example, small pieces that I’d never be able to find would cause holes that would lead to leakage. And what about the fact that the pieces of all that glasses that broke together would be intermingled and hard to identify as belonging to one or another? So, as you can imagine, it would be nearly impossible to repair all the glasses, or even just one, back to its original structure. ONLY GOD CAN PUT IT BACK TOGETHER PERFECTLY. Only God can put ME back together PERFECTLY.
So, I found myself in a new state of being yielded to His workings. I could visualize myself handing him all the pieces I had picked up, whether they belonged to my own “glass” or to one of my family member’s “glasses”, and then giving to Him the badly patched and glued together “glass” that I have been working on for so many years. With that a new sense of peace and delighted urgency came over me!
I wish I had the ability to post a picture of the glass(es) as I saw them in mind’s eye. To fully understand why the Lord was showing me the importance of letting Him take over the reconstruction you’d have to see what I did! You could tell it was a glass, but not one you’d ever wanna put to your mouth! So many rough edges, globs of glue, small and large holes randomly throughout, even part of an entire side was missing! Yet God is so good and kind and gentle that He lovingly took all of this from me and even encouraged me in my efforts, but now it was time for Him to not just “make it work” but to do what He is oh-so-good at doing, completely restore that which the enemy had come to destroy!
To Be Continued….
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