Unmet expectations are the starting point to resurrection. -Steven Furtick

Have you ever gone to bed in one season and woken up in another? Completely unexpected and utterly crushing. Most of the time that event that takes us from one season to the next is a raw sting felt in the deepest places of your minds and bodies. A position of aftermath that you wish you could comprehend but can’t seem to begin to grasp how you even got there.  Sadly, the way it works its way into lives is not a gentle spring wind that seems to flow its way into a warm summers draft and it is not a cool fall air that works its way into a chilly winter’s night. No, those seasons are felt more like a cold day in July. A season of bone chilling pain like a rainy winters night. You’d give anything to be curled up safely beside the warm fire but you feel as if you are locked out on the porch with no roof as the rain falls around. A place that if you only could, you would pick up the phone and call the last season and plead for it’s return- where life was good. A place where you mourn something you can’t control, and sometimes miss the miracle in the midst. Just like Jesus on the cross, what the disciples didn’t realize at the time was that the agony that they were experiencing was a part of a bigger story, one of the greatest love stories of all time. And the pain that you are experiencing today, is a part of your bigger story, even when you can’t see it. Have you ever been in that season? I think we all have!

Disappointment at its finest is something you never see coming, or maybe you did and dreaded its arrival. You go to bed one night in a love affair with your life and the contentment of the season that you’re in and you wake up the next morning as if a twister just ran its way through the middle of your world. Majority of the time with life’s unexpected and mostly unwanted changes to the seasons, are ones that you never asked for and don’t deserve. You never saw it coming nor could you prepare for it. You couldn’t control it nor could you stop it. And the ironic thing is God could, but He chose not to. For some GOOD reason. Wether it be the sin of human flesh or just an event that we still can’t seem to find good in. Living in the trenches of that place, you can’t and may never understand it. But we know and trust that for some reason, God has a plan in it. And for some reason- these ashes that we can’t seem to dig out of, will one day be beauty again.

You see, when Lazarus “died” after Mary and Martha begged Jesus to heal him, Martha’s heart screamed out, “God if you were only here.” Four days later after their hearts toiled with the disappointment, Jesus came and brought Lazarus back to life. God didn’t wait four days because He couldn’t save him from the very beginning, but because He wanted people to see His miracles in the impossible. You see, sometimes miracles can’t be seen without the heartache. Sometimes, we can’t deal with the what is because we are still stuck in the what was. The visions, the feelings, the night terrors, the betrayal- The What was….

Lysa Terkhurst said, “Think about a plain piece of ice. If the ice stays in a cube, it will always be a square piece of ice. But once melted, (in less than ideal temperatures may I add) it can be formed into a beautiful shape when frozen again.” Sometimes in order to become the beautiful sculpture that we are created to be. We must be melted down to be built back up. We must lose the shape that WE have created and be formed back into the shape the HE has created. Even when it hurts.

The hardest part of these seasons is understanding the tug and pull of the shaping. The tragedies that you don’t understand. The cancer that took your best friend. The parent that you lost after watching suffer. The addictions that you can’t make sense out of. The affair that you never saw coming. The business that you lost after putting your blood, sweat, and tears in. The infertility that would become your worst nightmare. The child that you thought you would out-live. And the list could go on…

I think we have all been through pure tragedy at some point or another. For some it was a one-time thing, and for others it’s as if the tragedy keeps coming with no end in sight. Some have endured worse than others but no one can know the true pain that you have felt and no one can minimize it without walking through it.  None of the stinging do we want to experience, however, one day we will see that all along, the tender places were doing something inside of us- even if it doesn’t turn out like we want it to. It’s just a chapter, not a book.

{Tragedy doesn’t make sense in the beginning just like a painting doesn’t. But when the masterpiece is finished, it is unspoiled and picture perfect.}

Easter always strikes me in this way in the words of a famous Easter sermon by S.M. Lockridge, “It’s Friday, but Sunday is coming.” How many of you are in “Friday” seasons right now just begging and pleading to get out? Heck even a Monday morning would be better! But know that Sunday is coming. Your Friday may have put you somewhere that you never thought you’d be. It may be a feeling that you never thought you’d be able to live through. It quite possibly is a season that you can’t wait to shut the door on. And for some, it’s a season that you would trade for anything else other than where you are. But know, SUNDAY is coming.

On resurrection day, it was said, “Take me back to the place where you laid Him.” The same rock that rolled over what seemed like the end of His life was the same rock that glorified the greatest love story of all times.  You see, the ironic thing is- sometimes the same rock that rolls our life into shambles is the same rock that will roll it back into something new and something fresh and even better than before.

{Dust is the ingredient that God loves to use. He made us humans of dust. He healed the blind with dust, and add a little water and clay is made out of that dust to which He forms masterpieces- just like you and me.}

I don’t know what your “dust” is right now or how dark your season may seem, but know that He sees it. Breathe in the feeling of being fully known and fully loved today and let it settle down into the deepest and darkest places of your soul.  Let that breath reach those places that haven’t been touched in a long time, if ever. Feel that breeze brush across those raw emotions that you’ve kept hidden from the world. Let it renew you from the inside out. And even if nobody in this world knows what you are going through or have been through, He does.

In all reality, there isn’t any plan of God’s that I would knowingly yield to because of the sheer pain that it would cause, but if I could only see the fruits on those trees of pain and what they would bear, I would absolutely and whole heartedly surrender my all. It’s just so hard in the prior to comprehend the pain without knowing the fruit in the after. Hindsight is always 20/20- those seasons have always been turned to the sweetness of beauty, even when they didn’t come out or end like we had imagined.

That’s why it’s so precious that on the rugged cross, He said, “It is finished.” Our lives, our stories, our brokenness- He knows it, He restores it, He redeems it, He calms it. He saves it. What happened that Friday on the cross was so that Sunday WE could have life and breath breathed back into our lungs.

So on this day, breathe deep into your soul His life and breathe out your fragmented and shattered seasons, no matter what it may be or how deep the pain may flow. Breathe free sweet friend and KNOW.