BLESSED

“I keep asking myself why all of this happened,” the letter read, “but you see… I already know the answer. God blessed the broken road that led me straight to you.”

When M and I first met, that song was in my head constantly. We’d walk around together singing it everyday as though we were rehearsing for some upcoming performance. Never though, did I realize how true the words in the song would eventually become for us.

“Every long lost dream led me to where you are…”

I met M in the depths of a debilitating illness. My life had hit rock bottom. I had stopped praying, no longer trusting God’s faithfulness. I had no hope for the future. Suddenly, all the verses that I’d so often focused on about the promises “not for destruction, but for a future and a hope” seemed to return void. At a time in my life where it seemed that all was irrevocably lost, I found M.

“I think about the years I spent just passing through. I’d like to have the time I lost and give it back to you. But you just smile and take my hand - You’ve been there you understand - It’s all part of a grander plan that is coming true…”

M was in a similar situation. He had lost his visitation rights to his daughter and a great deal of his hope for the future. Having reached a similar conclusion about his life that I had, he too was ready to give up. In two separate devastating turns of events in both of our lives, our paths were made to cross. And together, we not only found the hope we had lost in God, but the desire we had lost in life.

“Others who broke my heart, they were like Northern stars, pointing me on my way into your loving arms…”

In a few short months, my life changed so drastically. It was as if I’d been reborn. Suddenly, everything in my past that had brought me pain seemed so worthwhile because it had brought me to this point. That was the same realization that M came to while he was in jail. “Everything I’ve done caused me to meet you, so I am grateful for all of it,” he wrote. I never thought I’d feel that way, but God proved so faithful to us both, and even as we were so faithless and doubtful, he blessed us so immensely.

“This much I know is true… that God blessed the broken road that led me straight to you.”

For where we’ve been and what we’ve been through, I am that much more grateful to be where I stand. I am blessed.