A Low Place With A High Calling

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Hello Beauties! How is your brave heart on this first day of August? Are you feeling brave…or do you need a boost? Are you ready for a new month…or wishing you could have the last one back? Are you preparing for school…or prepping for one last summer adventure? Are you able to see the beauty in your current season…or longing for a way out?

Maybe you fall somewhere in between all those questions. Sometimes we don’t know where our heart stands until we take the time to be still. If only we’d stop running, distracting, preventing and controlling. I don’t wish any of you a broken ankle, but I do wish you a season of stillness. And the courage to embrace it. This is where a Bravehearted Beauty gains her strength. {Isaiah 30:15}

As I consider the last few weeks, here’s what I know: I am broken. And I mean that in the best possible way. I’m in a low place, but I’m not afraid of it…and miraculously not depressed by it. {Thank you, LORD!} My ultimate low isn’t a broken ankle. It just happens to be the thing that has brought me into a place of deeper surrender. And the thing that makes it hard to run away and pursue my own agenda. {Ah, the gift of immobility!} I knew right away this season would be about so much more than a broken bone, because God is always doing a deeper thing.

Yes, I’m in a low place, but I feel like I can finally see the bottom. And surprisingly, it looks a lot like this photo I captured on the Amalfi Coast. {Take a closer look at the top of this post.} Isn’t it beautiful? Instead of the utter darkness we often fear we’ll find at the bottom, I see sparkles of light and flashes of hope. In the shadows of hard and rocky places, I see new life and beauty. There is beauty at the bottom. So I allow myself to go low with the One who will lift me back up to the heights…with treasures that can only be found at the bottom.

There are no doubt glory stories to be told from the low places in our lives. I can’t wait to tell a more finished story from the heights, but there’s unfathomable glory being produced right here. Great faith is formed in the pit. True beauty is found in brokenness. I love sharing beauty, hopefully inspiring you to hunt for it in your own broken places. And while I may not share all the details of my brokenness here on the internet, I hope to share enough to let you know you’re not alone. Feeling all alone in the pit is the worst feeling in the world. {And it’s the place the enemy wants to keep you…believing his lie that you’re all alone.}

Bravehearted Beauties, you are not alone. {Deuteronomy 31:8 is one of many places of promise.}

You are BRAVE in this place. Even if your heart feels fragile in the moment, you are brave for facing your pain. Brave isn’t strong and unbreakable. Brave is having the courage to let your heart break. Brave is believing in a new thing when you can’t yet see it. Brave is daring to hope. Brave is choosing faith over fear. Brave is a lot of things that strong isn’t. You don’t have to be strong today. Just brave…even in your most fragile, painful place.

Pain is an unwanted, yet gifted teacher. I’ve shared some lessons learned in pain here and some perspective on pain’s purpose and power here. {“Without your wounds, where would your power be?”} But today, God’s whisper to my heart is to praise Him in the pain.

One little word makes all the difference. God isn’t asking us to praise Him for the pain, but to praise Him in the pain. {1 Thessalonians 5:18} How on earth can we praise Him in the pain? Honestly, I can’t unless I choose to believe these words are true:

“See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” ISAIAH 43:19

“Behold, I am making all things new!” REVELATION 21:5

“If you’ll hold on to me for dear life,” says God, “I’ll get you out of any trouble. I’ll give you the best of care if you’ll only get to know and trust me. Call me and I’ll answer, be at your side in bad times; I’ll rescue you, then throw you a party.” PSALM 91:14-15 

In this low place, I’m choosing to take God at His word and thank Him for what He says He’s doing, even when what I’m experiencing doesn’t yet feel like a rescue or a new thing. That’s what faith is…believing what we cannot see.

The purest praise flows out of faith. 

When God says He will rescue me, I choose to believe my rescue is already happening, even when circumstances make it look like I’m a little lower in the pit. I dare to picture the rescue operation, then get excited about the party, even when it doesn’t look like I have much to celebrate in the moment. And when my imagination fails me, which it often does, I ask God to give me a picture. {His Word is full of pictures.}

And finally I thank Him. Not for the pain, but for the promises. This is what it looks like to praise God in the pain.

I haven’t always been this way. I’m growing this way. And like it or not, pain has been my greatest teacher. But pain isn’t a forever place. It’s the place where our heart is broken so that it can be healed. It’s the place of surrender so that we can be saved. Pain is a low place with a high calling. That’s the crazy paradox of faith. The way down is the way up. It makes no sense. But life doesn’t make sense…even to a high minded intellectual/control freak who tries to make sense out of everything. There’s HOPE for her. There’s FAITH for her. There’s a RESCUE for her.

And then…there’s a party! Start dreaming about your dress and your guest list, Bravehearted Beauties! I can already picture the celebration on the other side of this present pain. Would you dare to believe this promise is true for you, too?

And you know what else? It’s almost too much to believe. As if a rescue mission and a party weren’t enough, here’s what else God is going to do: He’s going to turn this pit into a deep well. Because that’s what He does. He makes all things new. He doesn’t waste your pain; He redeems it. He doesn’t just airlift you out of the pit and leave a gaping hole; He turns it into a place of power and purpose. He doesn’t ignore your past; He uses all of it for good.

As one saint said, “This is what the past is for! Every experience God gives us…is the perfect preparation for the future that only He can see.” {Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place.} Talk about a woman who knew the pit! Corrie ten Boom survived Nazi concentration camp, and yet she could say with confidence, “There is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still.” 

Amen. Here’s to surrendering to the depths. And to the love that transforms our pit into a deep well. Here’s to the beauty found in brokenness.

Love to you with all of my brave and beautiful heart,