I used to hate my body for not holding onto my babies.
I blamed myself for my miscarriages, for the way I bled out perfectly good sacs with healthy children.
But the thing is, the Bible says we’re made from the earth. We’re dirt. And dirt is made from broken fragments of rock. I am comprised of literal brokenness. I am broken.
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| “A Memorial for Unborn Children” by Slovakian Sculptor Martin Hudacek |
She sat on my couch and it was a wordless grief. She spilled like a cracked jar, the story of how he’d forced her to get an abortion, and she couldn’t forgive herself she said.
Another friend told me she got an abortion to save her daughter from her grandfather, who was also her father, who would have hurt her baby the same way she’d been hurt her entire childhood. And now she can’t even call God father; God has become a woman to her because men aren’t safe and she misses her Abba.
She hates herself because she’s never known the safety of love, the promise of protection by those who are supposed to be allies. And she misses her daughter, so she takes it out on herself night after night and we are, so often, our own worst enemies (tweet this).
We’re more loyal to others than we are to ourselves. We convince ourselves we’re not worthy of love.
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| via reckless youth on instagram |
But who are we to withhold forgiveness from ourselves if God himself has torn open heaven’s door to call us forgiven?
Jesus didn’t judge the adulterous woman. No, he bent and wrote in the dirt–in the broken fragments of rock–and I believe Jesus wrote Forgiven across the skin of the earth (tweet this).
He wrote forgiveness across your skin, friend.
If we say we are unforgivable, we call God a liar, because his own son–a perfect Savior– said It Was Finished on a cross and breathed his last and descended into hell so we wouldn’t have to, so that we wouldn’t have to hurt ourselves night after night , so that no amount of sin could keep us from laughing.
Forgiveness is our lost children blessing us, because they are whole now. They are waiting for us in heaven, very much alive.
Our Savior is handing us the seed. He’s got it in his hands and we just have to take it. Plant it in our hearts.
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| via reckless youth on instagram |
The thing about being made from dirt is–it’s easy to grow flowers (tweet this).
And that seed of forgiveness, it will stem and blossom and germinate, into the most glorious garden, filled with multitudes of children: filled with hope, and faith, and love.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a NEW creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation… Be reconciled to God. God made him who HAD NO SIN to be sin for us, so that in him, we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:17-21)
Did you hear that, friends?
You are not only forgiven. You are righteousness. You are God’s friend, but more than that–you are his daughter.
There is NO condemnation in him, just a ferociously extravagant kind of love, the kind that bleeds red down Calvary’s hill, the kind that loses HIS child so he might gain the world, because he is the shepherd that leaves all for the one.
And you, friend, are the one. God left everything, for YOU. And there’s nothing that can separate you from the love of the Father. No height nor depth, no angels or demons, no principalities or darkness, can keep you from him. (Romans 8)
God made us from dirt. So he could grow a garden (tweet this).
Your life may not feel like a bed of roses, friend, but you are the fragrance of Christ to the perishing. Thorns and everything, you are God’s creation.
And you are beautiful.