I have a life time of broken memories.
There were years that passed by when I felt worn down and thread-thin, as if any little thing would break me straight through again.
My worst nightmare had come true. I lived the reality of being left by community and the aftermath was the worst of all.
The lies came pounding and the struggle began anew with each day that followed.
If everyone had up and gone, then am I not a good friend? Is there anything about me worth hanging onto or sticking around for? Why wasn’t anyone sticking up for me and where had I gone wrong?
What was wrong with me?
I was too much of all that was wrong and not enough of everything right.
I was too much and not enough and all of the lies pointed their snarky, dark and twisted fingers at me until they climbed into my mind and the lies became truths that I told myself.
Community was dead to me and love was just another lie to add to the pile. I felt too far gone and resolved to just handle it all alone. Life, alone.
I didn’t know God had another plan.
[I instagrammed this verse the December day we met up. Of course.]
On May 26, 2009 my world imploded and it hasn’t been the same since. I fought with my best friend and we all know there are those picking-at-eachother fights and the big fights. We had never really fought before but that day we did. We said words that can never be shoved back in, like trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube.
We did it, both of us. We broke the Body of Christ and life moved on but my heart never did.
I spent the next four years praying, begging, weeping, wailing, and waiting.
More than anything, I prayed for reconciliation.
God healed me in ways I could never put into words and community became real again. I realized He is faithful and good and He is love. He showed me in a hundred different ways that He can mend what is broken and glue back the broken pieces.
He loved me at my darkest and held me at my weakest.
And still I prayed. Because if nothing is impossible…
I prayed that redemption would win and that I would see reconciliation this side of heaven. Because I had learned it long ago and I knew it true and deep, nothing in this big wide world is impossible for Him and so why would this be too hard?
We hadn’t spoken in years, this girl and I. We were doing life in circles all around each other and never with each other and no matter how many times I prayed that God would change her heart towards us, she wasn’t changing.
But He was changing me. He was remaking and renewing and redeeming.
I found community – really, community found me – and He showed me the power of story. I claimed the word ‘writer’ and on the outside everything was looking pretty great but still the prayers remained unanswered.
I’ve never heard the word “wait” so many times and after four and a half years I was tired of praying for beauty from ashes and seeing nothing but a heap of black. Hope was getting hard to hold onto and there were days I had to hope for hope to stick around. Because how long does it take before you pray the same prayer for what feels like a lifetime and then finally see it happen?
There was nothing happening.
For four and a half years He worked in me and I kept waiting for Him to work on us.
Every year, this week knocks me down to my knees. I find myself asking for what feels near impossible. I ask Him to bring what is dead back to life.
I’ve kept this green paper with me no matter where I’ve moved. It began taped to a mirror in Florida in the summer of 2009 and has come with me to college and three different dorm rooms in Alabama.
I have prayed the words and believed the words and asked the words and now I can say that I have seen them, too.
I’m back on my knees this May 26th, but the prayer is different this year. It’s one of thanks and gratitude so wide and deep that the ocean seems small.
He would have been good if nothing had changed. He would have been faithful if things had stayed the same. God would still be God whether He answered my prayer or not.
Even if nothing changed about my situation, nothing about my view of God would change.
I’ve been living in the land of the living and have been breathing deep of the impossible made possible since October of 2013.
I’ve pulled up blank page after blank page and the words have never come.
Of all the stories I have ever told or written, this may very well be my favorite. I’ve been sitting with it, wrestling over the words for half a year, while struggling to find the answer to this one question:
How do you put words to a miracle?
This past October He did the impossible. He brought us back together. And lest you think it was all sunshine and rainbows, you should know that it was messy and ugly and plain hard.
But it was good. It was so very good.
There were endless conversations and difficult discussions but there was grace over it all.
God had been working away, redeeming us both individually, and it was time for reconciliation to take center stage.
We faced the hard truths head on and we chose not to shy away from the painful. We found the balance of the deep and the light and He weaved real life and laughter into the mix. We got to re-know each other and I found that we had both changed but at the core we were both so much the same and more than anything, we were in love with Jesus.
God had done a work in both of us during those four and a half years and it was time for the broken to be beautiful, for the woundings to be healings and the cracks to spill out grace.
Redemption won. Four years of prayers answered, the impossible made possible in front of my very eyes sitting across the table on a December afternoon.
Today marks five years and I sit here amazed. We’re no longer strangers. In fact, we’re friends. We’ve made the choice to do life together, to trust and believe and hold onto hope. And to know, more than anything else, that He didn’t have to give us this gift – but He chose to.
We’re living the miracle of the gift and some days I have to pinch myself. It’s not a dream, this is real life and it is so gloriously messy.
No one could sign their name to this miracle but God Himself. Our re-friendship screams the glory of only One.
Four years ago I wrote her a letter and months later she read it for herself. It’s time for another, but this time around, the words scratching black across the page read a little differently. This time, I can hand it to her myself.
Dear friend,
I get to call you that again, and admittedly I say it often – simply because I can. I am overwhelmed by what He has done and humbly in awe of Who He is. That He chose to work in us and now works through us. That our story is now one of redemption, reconciliation, renewal.
This is not just my story anymore – it is ours. And it is my very favorite to tell because only He could sign His name to it.
Sometimes there are just no words. The glory of the miracle can feel just too much but not a day has gone by where I have missed the gift.
You are a gift to me and to call you friend again is a joy. I would have been okay if you never called me friend again, but then you did. I would have been completely fine if you never said you loved me, but you did. You were careful to wait, to protect me and respect me and to only say the words when you were sure you meant them.
And then on a spring day a letter showed up in my mailbox and I cried. Not because you loved me but because I believed you.
I trust you, friend. I believe in you and I believe you. And above all, I am certain that He has used us to write a miracle of a story that displays His grace and goodness.
Getting to re-know you has been one of the best times of my life, but it’s not as great as getting to do life with you now.
It’s all the ordinary and mundane that is turned into a gift each day. You challenge me and encourage me and I see Jesus in you.
You would have been okay without me and I would have been okay without you. We were both, in fact, okay. But we’re better together. Our story wasn’t finished and I’m thankful we weren’t supposed to stay in that chapter.
He has done a new thing and continues to do so every day. When I couldn’t see it coming and wondered if He heard a single word lifted up, He was making a way. He is faithful in all things.
I never told you, but in the early fall months, in between camp and October emails that led to text messages that led to a coffee date, this one song brought me to tears time and time again. I would be driving down the road and it would come on and I couldn’t stop my hands from going up as I sang the words into a prayer.
Let me see redemption win
Let me know the struggle ends
That you can mend a heart
That’s frail and torn
I wanna know a song can rise
From the ashes of a broken life
And all that’s dead inside can be reborn
Cause I’m worn
{Worn, Tenth Avenue North}
I never told you that on the way to that December coffee date, I was nervous and hopeful and this song came on. Because God. Only God. Oh, how He must have laughed.
There are no words worthy of the miracle of what He’s done, but I promise you this: I have never seen beauty from ashes, life from death, or light from dark quite like the story He has given us.
Our lives are a living testimony that nothing is too far gone or too impossible for God.
Thank you for trusting me into your life, for loving my words and encouraging me to share what was once my story and is now our story. Thank you for encouraging me and walking with me. I love you so much and I think it’s time for you to know, you’re one of my closest friends.
That doesn’t scare me any more.
Life is better together. He is glorious and beautiful and I see Him clearly in the story that is now ours.
Here’s to a million new memories and learning what it means to love Jesus and do life together.
I love you always.
