This morning at 2 am, our phone rang. It was a call I had been waiting on. A call I had been praying for. A call that revealed the divine plan of a good God who never, ever stops working.
Our youngest daughter was facetiming us from the hospital, proud to show her mama her brand new baby girl. If you know our story, you know the journey to get to this moment. It’s nothing short of a miracle. Not only is our little girl alive, but she has her own little girl now and she wanted to share her with me.
Miracle after miracle. Blessing upon blessing. Proof of a living God.
The 4 year old little girl we met in an orphanage in Mexico, who became the burdened 13 year old who tried to take her life, who then became the most beautiful 17 year old that walked out of our home and left our family to never come back. The prodigal who has journeyed far on a path I wouldn’t have chosen, she’s finding her way. God has never stopped working. On the hard days. On the days when I’ve lost hope. On the days when anger got the best of me. On the days when my hurt heart did nothing but build walls. God was always working.
Working in the unseen. Working in the mess. Working in the dirty details I wanted to ignore.
But, I’m learning something about God – if you give him your mess, he can turn it into something beautiful as if it were designed to be beautiful from the beginning. He can take a pile of mistakes and somehow weave them together into a testament of his power and love of tremendous value and worth.
Look what he did with his first creation of man. He took a pile of dirt – just dirt. Dusty ol’ dirt from the ground, and he breathed life into it. Just dirt. And when God breathed on it, dirt became a man.
That doesn’t make sense to me, but I believe it. And if God can take something as worthless and meaningless as dirt and form it into a living being that every single one of us would come from, then what could he do with your pile of dirt? Yes, your heap of disappointment. Your load of nothing. Your handful of brokenness that has lost all hope?
Let me tell you what he could do – HE COULD BREATHE LIFE INTO THAT!
I’ve seen him do it.
I’ve seen him take a marriage that was so far gone they had already gotten divorced, moved out, split their finances, and moved in with other people – then God breathed life into that marriage again. Today, they’re part of a marriage ministry to testify of the wonder working power of God in the messiest of marriages and hardest of divorces.
I’ve seen him take a woman who was absolutely crushed in her divorce and instead of her husband returning, God went to work in her. She was once in such a dark place she didn’t want to continue living, but God saved her. And healed her. And called her. Now her career is guiding other women through an unwanted divorce to find their life worth living on the other side of it.
I’ve seen God take a young man who had ruined his life with drugs and alcohol, running from family and the law, and land him in a last chance recovery center he didn’t want to be in. His mama messaged me the day he ran away from that recovery center and asked me to pray. I asked God to stop him in his tracks and turn him around. Bring him back to the place that could help him. And let me tell you, that’s exactly what God did. This young man literally stopped running, turned around, and walked back through the doors of the recovery center, got clean, and got healed. Now 15 years later, he and his wife OWN that recovery center and he’s helped countless other young, lost, addicted souls just like he once was, walk through that door and then walk out whole, clean, healed.
That’s our God! No one can do what he does. He can breathe life into this!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Today is day 1 of my granddaughter’s life.