The room was alive. Women crowded into the ballroom, eager to connect with each other and open the Word of God. After a time of praise and worship, it was my turn to speak. It was our final session for this particular women’s ministries convention. The women had shared some of their heartache and pain: marriages on the rocks, struggles with childhood abuse, children wandering from God as they each grappled with the reality of living out the gospel. I love how the gospel gets into the nitty-gritty of our lives—how we treat others, how we love, whether we can forgive. It’s when it costs us something, when it hurts to follow Him, that radical obedience to Jesus becomes apparent. And these women revealed the power of the gospel!
All too soon our time together ended, and I was back on the front row, my mind already on our flight that afternoon. Suddenly I realized the woman who had closing prayer hadn’t started. Instead she was talking about me. “Jill, I feel God has a special message I’m supposed to give you.”
God specializes in taking broken things and using them for His service.
I looked around at the other women. Surely she could have saved this for a more private moment. This could be awkward. But she just continued speaking, while I sought to keep my face blank.
“God said to tell you this.” She paused dramatically while I cringed inside, uncertain of what was coming. “You might be infertile, but you are pregnant: pregnant with the Word of God and His Spirit. His Word flowed out of you this weekend, and the baby you delivered has ministered to all of us. He fills you daily with the Word, so that Word can travel out to others.”
We closed our eyes for prayer, and I was grateful that nobody could see my tears. Greg and I had somehow understood that God had said no because we were supposed to be involved in ministry. But I’d never heard it expressed that way. So it’s fitting somehow that my last column for the Review should come full circle. My first article in the Review, for Mother’s Day in 2009, was called “The Pain of a Rose,” and it focused on the pain of our infertility and that devastating loss. Now, 16 years later, I’m reminded that our God specializes in taking broken things and using them for His service. And He can do that for you, too.
Give Him your pain, your loss, your brokenness. Be honest with Him. And then watch as He begins to fill your life with His joy and hope, the eager expectation of what He’s done and what He will do. All because of the hope we have since that long-ago mother delivered hope and healing in the form of a Child.
It’s been wonderful to spend these years with you as we journeyed toward Jesus. Thank you for what you’ve taught me of Him.