Where Broken Meets Beautiful

Titus 3:5 — He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.

If I could go back and sit across from the younger me, I do not think I would try to fix her. I do not think she would have believed me, anyway. She was stubborn. Wounded. Tired. She was doing the best she could with what she had, and at the time, it was not much.

I was twenty-five when I lost my mom. I remember the hospital room, the chill of it, and the way time slowed in the hours before she passed. When she was gone, I walked out carrying this hollow kind of silence inside me. That grief stayed. It followed me everywhere I went.

And I wish I could say I handled that pain well. I did not. I ran from people who loved me. I tried to outrun the ache. And when I could not, I tried to bury it by numbing it.

A series of choices—and a thousand little escapes—turned into chains of drug and alcohol addiction. I was not proud of who I was becoming, but for a long time, I did not see a way out.

But if I could say just one thing to her—the girl who buried her mom and then buried herself not long after—it would be this: He is real.

God. He is not just a word people toss around when they do not know what else to say. He is not just a name in a book.

He is real. He is real in hospital rooms. He is real in addiction. And He is real enough to save you when you have gone over the edge.

I wish I could have wrapped that girl up and told her again and again until she believed it. But the truth is, I would not go back and undo anything. Not even the hardest parts because God did not waste a single moment. He used every scar, every mistake, every loss. All of it became part of a story I never expected—a story of grace.

And if that is where you are right now—if you are grieving, if you are stuck in something you don’t want to admit, if you think God is only for people who have it together—I want you to hear me clearly: You are not too far gone.

God is real. And He is not scared of your story. He steps right into the middle of it, and when He is through, what is left will not be shame.

It will be grace.