Like this:

Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.  Romans 5:3-5

(DISCLAIMER: This blog post is PG. I’m going to take some artistic license and use bad words a couple of times. The substitutions I came up with just wouldn’t work in some places. So Mom, Grandma and MeMommy: I’m sorry. Yes, I was raised better than this. Yes, it’s very unladylike. No, it’s not your fault. Now having said that…)

Shit happens. It just does.

This is not any kind of big news. This is not some kind of huge revelation. Everybody knows this. Because it has happened, is happening, and will still happen as long as we’re living on this earth. Sin, the fall, all that is why life is just so dang hard.

Yet the uncontested, universal truth of the above statements brings little comfort to a broken heart grieving the death of a dream.

I was on one of my brief but lonely drives back home from dropping Caroline off with her dad for the weekend. I was all prayed up, had my worship music on and I was not, absolutely NOT going to cry this time. And then I did. A long hard, wracking sob that lasted through several songs.

I was used to these cries. They usually stirred up excruciating guilt and all the torturous what-ifs and if-onlys a human being could possibly come up with. They’re lonely cries. Emotionally I crawl into a hole, away from God, away from any support, cry it out, then emerge, ready to function again.

But this cry was different from its predecessors. It wasn’t a hopeless, dark, despairing cry that usually accompanied me in the car on those trips. It was…safe. Normally every tear is another reminder of weakness and failure. But not this time. Each tear that fell seemed to cleanse my pain. God sat with me in it, held me close, and wept with me. And I felt strangely…strong.

As I drove, God began to paint pictures in my head. There was a small but distinct sprout coming out of the earth. It was growing out of soil that was covered with the remains of a dead plant that stood there before. Life from death. Death first, and then life. Real life. Abundant life. Yes, that is a theme woven throughout scripture. That’s how God works.

And as the sprout grew it gained nutrients from the carcass of the plant that had died. The death didn’t just allow new life. It made it grow. Bigger, stronger, faster.

And then God slammed a truth into my heart so hard it almost took my breath away:

Fertilizer.

People spend money on bags of manure to put on their vegetables. Some keep all their kitchen scraps and other organic waste to use as compost. This stuff is valuable, even CRITICAL to the growth of a harvest. I had just done a volunteer gardening project days before. After filling the garden box with topsoil, our team tore open a bag of manure to help our flowers grow.

Did an old school farmer just happen to stumble upon this idea? I don’t think so.

God, the Creator of all things and the original Gardener, knew in all His foreknowledge how it was all gonna go down. Before time began, our King wrote death into the story of the world to give us life. And in awe-inspiring ways we can never imagine, He has ‘worked all things together for good’ for His people.

We’ve all dealt with our share of crap. And up until recently I thought I only had two options: Either sit under the pile of stinky stuff and whine about it. Or consider it my cross to bear and just try to move forward with it.

But that day in the car, God whispered to my spirit:

Grow.

You see it as waste. I see it as fertilizer.

Grow, My child. Grow.

Far be it from me to even begin the discussion of why bad things happen to ‘good’ people and if God is so good then how could He allow…blah, blah, blah. We’ve all thought it. We’ve all said it. We’ve all been there. Did God want this for me? Was this part of His perfect/prescriptive/predestined providence?

I know that nothing happens to me without God’s permission, but that’s about the extent of what I know. And honestly, it’s not my job to know. That’s God’s job. My life got too big for me a while ago and I surrendered it to Him. But being all powerful as He undoubtedly is, He allowed it. He allowed the shit to happen. And while it smells bad and looks gross, I can’t help but think that He’s looking down on me like a hopeful gardener watching a recently planted seed.

There are valuable nutrients to be absorbed from the carcass of every perished plan we held so dearly to our hearts that now lies lifeless on the ground. A new aspect of God’s character revealed through suffering. A new relationship springing through the comforting of a loss. A new understanding of the resilience of the Spirit-fortified heart.

The hardness of life gives you depth. It gives you a story and a ministry. If you weather your pain alone, you trade it in for waste. The crap just stays crap. But when it gives you dimension and compassion that you wouldn’t have had otherwise and it’s used to minister to another, you’ve traded in the crap for gold in God’s economy.

So the question is: Will we sit under the pile that life has dumped on us? Whine about how unfair it is? How bad it smells? How it doesn’t make any sense? Or will we try to trudge forward, dragging it behind us and try to make the best of it and/or pretend it’s not there?

OR

Will we in desperate, dynamic faith, explode in growth, fertilized by the death of whatever dream was sacrificed at the altar of God’s sovereignty?

I. Will. Grow.

My King, dare I even begin to thank You for the fertilizer in my life? The excruciating growth that came from my crap was hardly my choice. But Lord, You grew me anyway. And looking around in it now and back on it then, I see You. Not in the sin, not in the death, but in the redemption. And as long as there is sin, there is Christ. And as long as there is Christ, there is deliverance. My Jesus, thank You for redeeming my crap to enhance the growth of your impatient daughter. Thank You for the reminder that no waste need be waste in Your kingdom. Your ways are so unsearchable, my King. But Your ways are so perfectly good. And I rejoice in that truth. Amen.