Share Day and Blessings.

Thursday morning I drove into Austin to attend the last day of my Bible Study Fellowship class. Eight years culminating. Rain was pelting my car as I stared at people who were at bus stops, walking, or pushing broken down motorcycles. I thanked God for my old car. We had been in the worst drought on record in some time and I thanked God for the rain. My mind drifted to Laura Story's song Blessings. She wrote it about her husband's brain tumor. I sat there in my car outside the church with the rain beating against my car so hard that it sounded like the tin roof over my studio. "What if your blessings come through raindrops . . .," typed into my twitter. Words from Laura's song. The next line echoed in my head, "What if healing comes through tears?" Little did I know what God was about to show me that day.

I sat in the sanctuary listening to teary-eyed women share about the extensive glory God had shared with them through His word the past year. I listened to the Holy Spirit whisper things deep into my own heart. "Your turn," God says. Standing, I thank the women who show up to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with my daughter. I told of the babies I had lost and how I don't turn loose of my two sugars easily. I told of how God had spoken to me in Isaiah 58:10 and led me to love on a homeless man. God opened my heart up in that moment to realize a very profound truth. Giving it some background, I have lived through multiple types of childhood abuse, 11 total marriages by my parents, losing two brothers, losing six babies, and so forth. However, the pain I experienced in my church the past year was by far the most agonizing I had experienced. I walked into that BSF class in September with a knife in my back that went through to my belly. On that morning as I spoke and God shook the heavens, I quoted that verse from Isaiah, "If you pour out what you have to sustain your life on the needy and afflicted, then your light will rise in darkness." My healing had culminated in that moment. As I have sought to pour out the love of God on those around me, God was busy mending. As I met Jesus in Isaiah, what seems to be a fifth gospel, God was knitting together. All of this came together like a mighty thunderclap and I knew I was healed far beyond how deeply I was broken.  "What if the trials of this life are your mercies in disguise?"