My family will tell you I am not a beach person. I am pale and hot natured so the thought of sitting in wet sand, being hot and get burned just doesn't appeal to me but this summer our girls insisted we take them to the beach. They felt deprived of the sun and the surf after years of visiting cities, ballparks, and mountains. So off we went to Myrtle Beach, SC. It was a place we had never been before and after a long drive we finally arrived to a quaint resort area where we had trees, surf, and lots of quite. The girls loved it and I must admit I enjoyed the breeze off the ocean and the shells.
The shells...they were everywhere. As someone that had always gone to the Gulf I wasn't expecting the sheer number of shells everywhere at all times of the day...big ones, little ones, beautiful ones and broken ones. Ahhh the broken ones. It was in a broken shell that I discovered there is still beauty.
My life has at times seemed pretty broken. This past year has been one of them. I have deserted God and all my beliefs it seemed. I felt that religion was a joke and I was the biggest joke of all but in picking up one shell I found that wasn't true.
Philippians 3:13 tells us "Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended; but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before." That shell reminded me that my past is behind me. Well there be repercussions from it still...OH YES but I have still have to strive for those things that God has before me. The greater and better things that I have yet to see.
See when I took my eyes off the beauty of God and his word...I became broken. But getting refocused I can still have a beautiful life. Because often the broken shell is the most beautiful after all.
Gina, I am a broken shell too. Most of us are. Very few of us have lived a charmed life. Your scripture pull is an excellent testimony and challenge. Consider also 1 Timothy 1:12-16. Praying for your journey, Gina.
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