Beautiful Things

You make beautiful things

You make beautiful things out of the dust.

                                                                                 - Gungor

A few weeks ago, my friend Jordan Raycroft, a Canadian singer songwriter with mad talent, asked if I would be willing to fill in at a performance for his usual violinist. I felt incredibly honored to have been asked and quickly agreed. After a few marathon practice sessions, I found myself in a tiny back room of a church having a pre-show band meeting with a bass player and jazz drummer I had only just met wearing make-up (a rarity) and new clothes I hoped would fool the audience into thinking I belonged there.

Opening for Jordan’s band was a 17-year old girl, playing her guitar and pouring out her heart to a room full of youth. She was kind of country, and I smiled to myself as I heard her sing of summer camp romances, broken hearts, hope and expectation for what lies ahead. I felt I was listening to the slightly more confident younger version of myself - less jaded, more hopeful, laughing easier.

I started wondering at faded hopefulness wondering in my own life; what caused it and how to wake myself up to it hope again.

When I first started this blog, I was determined to recapture the Joy in my life, and honestly felt like I had begun to succeed. My motivation began slipping when I heard story after story of friends dealing with their own heaviness:

A dear friend, cancer free for two years, in and out of the hospital battling complications and medication side-affects

Friends of my in-laws, sharing with me their fresh grief over the sudden, unexplained death of their son, in his early 20’s

A woman I love as my own sister, and have known for nearly a decade, breaking the silence on horrible abuse in her own life

A friend’s child lost to cancer

My own experience has softened my own heart to others’ pain and I began to feel like there were just too many reasons to bleed. The Joy Project was temporarily abandoned.

Since then, I’ve begun not to just know but rather to know and internalize, that experiencing Joy isn’t the result of a one time battle, but the fruit of a continuous struggle to notice all that’s good in your life already. Ann Voskamp describes them as ‘gifts’.

You can read about her journey HERE.

Something happened earlier this week that inspired me to pick up my sword again – to find things to be thankful for and to continue this battle for Joy. On Saturday morning I sat in a room full of women while a friend of mine courageously picked up a microphone and publicly broke the silence on a history of abuse in her own life. She shared what she had experienced, how it continued to affect her as an adult and the coping mechanisms she has used to emotionally and mentally deal with her pain. She is one of my closest friends. I love her dearly. I had no idea. I could feel my heart breaking.

Then she did something that amazed me and gave me hope for my own journey.

She put her cue cards down, moved to the keyboard and sang a solo version of Gungor’s You Make Beautiful Things”

All this pain
I wonder if I’ll ever find my way
I wonder if my life could really change at all.

All this earth
Could all that is lost ever be found?
Could a garden come up from this ground at all?

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust.

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us.

All around
Hope is springing up from this old ground
Out of chaos life is being found in You

What Truth. What courage. What hopefulness.

This woman amazes me.

I’ve been thinking lately about the story of Joseph, one of the 12 brothers from which Jewish lineage stems. This is the ultimate tale of beautiful things coming out of the dust. As a youth, Joseph was beaten and bound by his own brothers, thrown into a pit and later sold to some Egyptians. For years afterward, he suffered slavery, false accusations, and imprisonment until much later he was brought before Pharaoh to interpret a dream. As a result became Pharaoh’s 2^nd in command, in charge of planning and implementing a food rationing/storage system that would later save the lives of his brothers, preserving his family line.

Here’s the part I’ve been hanging onto.

When Joseph is faced with his brothers again, who are at his feet and terrified of his planned course of action to repay them for their cruelty, this is how he responds,

“You meant evil against me,” (the Hebrew word used here means ‘weave’), “But God rewove it together for good.” Genesis 50:20

For Joseph, for his brothers and for all of Egypt, God made something beautiful out of the dust.

And He can do it for us too.

He gives good gifts. His timing is perfect. His ways are not my ways, but He has the whole picture and I don’t. Until things become clearer, I’m going to trust and know that hope is not the stuff of fairy tales. It is for me too, and although I may not yet see it, something beautiful will come out of this dust.