trying to find God's glory in the midst of pain

The past seven days, I've been thinking alot about what occurred on these exact same seven days just one year ago. Just a little while ago, about a year and a half, Matthew and I desired to go to Cairo, Egypt to teach in a missionary school. We traveled down to Florida for these seven days to go through the first week of training, and came back with an ache in our hearts that still to this day hasn't been redeemed. We don't know how God will flip the pain to reveal His glory.

We're searching for it. In every nook and cranny of our lives. We want to proclain God's glory through these hurts, but how do you do that, when it doesn't make sense, and you don't know the words to put behind the pain to reflect God in a way that honors Him?

When we look back since that time, we can't image being in Egypt right now. We agree that we weren't ready to go. We weren't prepared the way that missionaries need to be. We didn't know enough about our Savior and about our God to go into a predominately Muslim country. We weren't prepared to be comsidered infidels.

I feel like I know more about God than I did then...but I still don't feel prepared, and I don't know if that will ever be a desire in my heart again.

I remember after that time spent in Florida, coming back to Bowling Green and spring approaching. I love the spring time. I love how the sun feels different and the lense of winter escapes the sun. Spring represents so much to me. It's the green. It's new life. Winter is so harsh and depressing. Everything around you is dead. No confidence of hope. No confidence until that little spout of green appears in the muck and mire of the ground. Spring is on it's way. The redeeming power of Jesus is magnified through the nature of the earth.

That spring time, even though little sprouts of green were appearing, my heart was stuck in winter. I remember listing to my favorite band U2, trying to keep a collected and hopeful spirit. I remember driving along 75 N to work, listing to "Beautiful Day" , with my sunroof peeked open, yelling and screaming at the top of my lungs that song. Tears streamed down my face, but I wasn't going to say that it wasn't a beautiful day, because it was. It was God's day.


Some of the lyrics that touched my gray heart was:

It's a beautiful day
Sky falls, you feel like
It's a beautiful day
Don't let it get away

You're on the road
But you've got no destination
You're in the mud
In the maze of her imagination

You love this town
Even if that doesn't ring true
You've been all over
And it's been all over you
..............
What you don't have you don't need it now
What you don't know you can feel it somehow
What you don't have you don't need it now ....Don't need it now
Was a beautiful day

When I think back on that time, even through the pain, the anger and quite honestly the hate for God that I had because it didn't make sense. How could God do this? But it didn't have anything to do with that. God was molding me, using the pain in my heart to create in me a trust that I never had before. God didn't make sense. I didn't have anything to hold onto. That trip brought me to a place of need. Need of God. Need of the REAL God. Not someone that you go to just for things. Not someone that you just go to for healing of a family member. The REAL God who uses those things to ultimately glorify Him through the pain. A God that doesn't make sense, but a God this is REAL.

Another lyric from U2 that I would sing over and over is Walk On

And if the darkness is to keep us apart
And if the daylight feels like it's a long way off
And if your glass heart should crack
And for a second you turn back
Oh no, be strong

Walk on, walk on
What you got they can't steal it, no they can't even feel it
Walk on, walk on...Stay safe tonight

And I know it aches and your heart it breaks
And you can only take so much
Walk on, walk on

Leave it behind You got to leave it behind
All that you fashion All that you make
All that you build All that you break
All that you measure All that you feel
All this you can leave behind
All that you reason All that you sense
All that you speak All you dress-up
All that you scheme...

Just walk on....just walk on....Matt and I have been repeating that in our heads since the day we left, one year ago. Just walk on. God will meet you along the way, and turn your heartbreak into His Glory. Just keep walking.