Art Therapy
Theme of the Week: Broken Wholeness
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
 1 of 1
Key Bible Verse: You have engulfed us with your anger … You have hidden yourself in a cloud (Lamentations 3:43-44). Bonus Reading: Lamentations 3:1-26
On my office walls are several colorful mosaic crosses made of broken tiles, dinner plates, and stained glass. It was about four years ago, during my slow crawl out of depression that I began making mosaics. After seven years of chronic pain, I'd hit a physical and emotional wall. I felt like the broken mosaic of a shattered windshield, my life splintered into a zillion tiny pieces. Every day was a strange, surreal experience, as I begged God for help and strength.
When I could see absolutely no purpose in my brokenness, God used it to bring me to a new place of wholeness. My identity had been tightly wrapped around my writing career. Hitting my lowest forced me to discover that God loved me for who I was. So I took a year and a half off from writing. I now write my books with a pen in each hand, hunting and pecking because it eases the strain on my wrists. For someone who knows how to type fast, this is a very slow way to write a book.
The pain in my life pushed me to utter dependence on God. It taught me more than all the blessing I've ever received: a whole new understanding of who I am as God's child. He began to shape the brokenness into something beautiful He wanted to use for His purpose.
—Joey O'Connor in The Longing
My Response: What lesson has God used pain to teach me?
Thought to Apply: When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.—CHARLES A. BEARD (historian)
Adapted from The Longing (Revell, 2004) by permission.
Copyright © 2005 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity. 1 of 1
Hear my cry, for I am very low. Rescue me … so I can thank you.
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