Beauty for Ashes

When you’re young, you fantasize about a life free from hardship, anguish, or disappointments and then life happens. For some, many even, life’s arduous tendency reveals itself time and time again. We’ve all had hardship. We’ve all witnessed the death of something. It may be the demise of a marriage, business, or a plan. Perhaps it is the collapse of (in the case of what we are seeing daily in the news with our nation) an ideology of freedom or a set of beliefs and principles. For others reading this post, you may be wrestling with the quietus end of your innocence, a dream, possibility, hope or expectation. In the worse case possible most of us have endured the grievous loss of a loved one.
In all of these scenarios the debilitating effects of the termination of something or someone can leave our hearts and minds feeling shattered in to a gazillion pieces. Even worse, our inner being can feel utterly burned down to the ground…”Ashes, ashes, we all fall down”. Disappointment and grief can be paralyzing.
The poignant proverbial question then stands: How do we rise from the ashes and find strength to overcome?  Will we ever possibly move past these strickening feelings and moments?  The truth is when loss is severe as in the reality of 9/11, or the senseless murder of an unarmed citizen by a police officer, or in the instances of so many of the young girls who attended my mentoring camp last weekend who’ve survived violation and trauma, we do not rise. In the earliest stages of continuing on, we are carried. It’s a divine transport. God’s grace radically aides us in the form of moment-to-moment fortitude or the compassion of another to reach out to us.  It lifts a portion of the burden for us until we are able to feel again. As a young girl growing up in church, the older folks in the congregation that had survived many of life’s tests would say, “My soul looks back and wonders how I got over”. We slowly come back to life one day and one breath at a time. Inevitably, resuscitation turns into regeneration.
I know first hand a supernatural current delivers us from one stage of healing and recovery to the next if we open ourselves up to it, embrace and allow it.  Ultimately this current is capable of dropping us off at one of our most profound destinations: a place of personal liberty and empowerment. You know you are there when you have forgiven all involved in the scenario, especially yourself. Most importantly, you know you’ve arrived safely to a new way of living and a new identity, when you find yourself faced with the shadow of the situation recurring and you are able to victoriously stand against it. This time, standing with a new found strength, power, boldness, freedom, and intrinsic resilience. THis reality is most evident when you have the courage and grace to reach back and comfort another severed soul battling the same struggle without letting your issues takeover. It is in that very moment that you have discovered one of life’s most valuable treasures. I am not referring to a childlike, idealistic flaw free, pain free existence because enduring difficulties give us a greater appreciation for moments of peace, joy, and elation. But you, my friend, have received in the face of life’s many riveting challenges a far greater gift, the gift of being more than a conqueror and it’s reward is beauty in exchange for life’s ashes.