resilient?

He never ceases to amaze me. God seems to speak to me through the books that I read more than anything else. If you have been reading my blog for awhile, you may remember my post on Being Afraid of Being Afraid. In that post, I mentioned how God had spoken to me through two different Christian books in just two days. Well, what do you know-- it has happened again.

This semester I am taking a course called Psychopathology of Childhood. We are learning about many different disorders as well as risk factors that children have to getting the disorders, so on and so forth. A theme that has come up that always catches my attention is resilicency. I can remember being in a support group in middle school with children who had alcoholic parents and the leader of the group telling me that I was extremely resilient. Of course at the time I had no idea what that meant so I nodded and smiled and thanked her (assuming it was a compliment since a smile and a huge hug followed the statement). Over the years, this topic has always caught my attention when it comes up and just recently I have been giving it a lot of thought.

Growing up I has a loving mother and a great sister whom I assumed as my responsibility when my parents got divorced. Those two ladies were my lifelines. I was without a father in my life for the most part, my mom had boyfriends moving in and out of the house, I got into the habit of cutting myself for awhile and I also tried to take away my life twice. (I have not been able to share this information publicly but feel that those who read this know me and love me and accept who I am. I also speak of it so matter of factly because it is apart of the past and has only made me stronger and helped me to move forward.) Now you may be thinking-- and how exactly does this qualify you as resilient?

You can take one look at me and talk to me for just a few minutes to find out that my attitude on life has completely turned around since the days when I didn't want to live. The times when I was so sad because I "didn't have a dad" or because "my mom didn't like me as much as she liked her boyfriend".

Little did I know then that it was God saving me again and again. It was Him preparing me to live the life He has called me to. I claimed to be a nonbeliever for years and years (maybe because of the pain I felt when I was younger) but it all makes sense now.

Mark Batterson in In a Pit With a Lion on a Snowy Day puts it like this, "I'm convinced that the people God uses most are often the people who have experienced the most adversity...Adversity can produce an increased capacity to serve God." He goes on to explain that, "God wants to redeem the adversity you've experienced. He wants to recycle your adversity and turn it into a ministry..God is in the business of recycling our pain and using it for someone else's gain."

Batterson also clarifies that it is up to us to take on this ministry, because otherwise-- our pain remains just that-- painful. Also, the capacity in which we help others heal is largely related to the tough spots we have encountered.

WOW. Talk about my world being rocked. "No one rolls out the red carpet and invites tragedy into their life, but our greatest gifts and passions are often the byproduct of our worst tragedies and failures. Trials have a way of helping us redisocover our purpose in life." Remarkable.

God has been right there all along. Since the day I was born. I just never opened up my eyes to see Him. There have not been too many moments during my walk so far where I have stopped and said "ohhh yeah there He was way back then setting me up for now". But believe me.. this has opened my eyes big time. He has taken my pain and turned it into a ministry and I have finally agreed to follow through with it wholeheartedly. So.. resilient? Yes. Because of His love? You bet.

Dive in. Where were the places that you can look back to and see God now even though you couldn't then? I would love to hear your stories.