Sharing a few highlights from my life and what I have learned from them will be the topic of my next few posts.  First, I will share some details about my spiritual side and my history.

Recovering in our present requires taking baby steps forward. This is what we experience when we find ourselves starting over, picking up the broken pieces in our lives, and making something new in the process.

When my oldest son was two, Joshua fractured his femur in a long side-ways break. For the bone to mend correctly required that his leg be suspended in the air in a traction device. Both legs were strung up, and he rested on his back. Two weeks later, after the bone began to mend sufficiently, he was put in a cast that included both legs and covered him up to his waist. A brace connected his legs.

Needless to say, Josh was unable to walk. He sort of scooted around after a while. When they cut off the cast, no longer was he able to walk. Once again, he went through a process of gaining his balance and relearning how to walk. It didn’t take him long, but it was necessary.

In some ways, there is a parallel I can make from his physical experience to life in general. Difficult experiences and hurtful times impact us with a devastating force. The most trying times or mournful occurrences can leave us reeling, unable to function as we did before the loss. We must learn to walk again. It takes time to recover. Major wounding can be a slow road to health.

This writing will expose ways in which my healing and the healing of others have changed us and even made us stronger in the end.

Repurposing our past occurs after the things that hurt so profoundly from our past have been helped. Now our desire is to help someone else with their struggles in this same area. It’s like my cousin, who found a way to sobriety through Alcoholics Anonymous. He now sponsors other people to help them on their path to recovery.

We like to quote the proverbial saying, When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. That’s what we do as Christians. Scripture says it another way. God makes beauty from ashes.

An acquaintance of mine, the church choir director, once sent me a card during an excruciating period in my life. I was in her choir at the time, and we were getting ready for the Christmas cantata. I didn’t know her well but admired her gift as a director and skill as a vocalist. She always had a smile for everyone. It was the month that my divorce would be granted, and I was pretty torn up about it. She wrote these words to me, that I so appreciated.

Dear Norma,

I just wanted you to know how much you are loved! In a very real sense you are grieving, like some of us are who have lost a loved one through death. I am certain our wonderful Lord will supply your every need, be it physical or emotional, still I know the emptiness and hurt there is! . . . For years I have been encouraged by 2 Corinthians 1:3-5 . . . I will, I am praying for you and yours!

Rosemary.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.  For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.

2 Corinthians 1:3-5

What Rosemary did for me was she lived out the words that she shared. From the sorrow in her life, she could come along side of me to encourage and walk with me in the sorrowing time in my life.

That is how it is. We give to others out of what we have received, even in the thin places.

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