Closure can be such a difficult thing.  Letting go of something to reach for something different, in my estimation, is one of the most vulnerable places I have experienced.  In my life, I can think of a few different seasons of loss when I reached a point where only my brokenness remained.  There was nothing else to be done, nothing else to sort through, nothing left unsaid—only my broken heart.   At that moment, my overwhelming emotion was fear.  Fear that if I released my brokenness, my broken heart, that somehow the loss was complete, final.

As I think that through, I wonder how many times I have held my brokenness tightly in my hand believing that somehow pain was better than nothing.

I heard a story years ago about a young girl who had gone to the market with her mom.  As they stood in the checkout line, the girl noticed a pearl necklace in a clear plastic egg, you know the kind.  She begged her mom for the necklace.  She simply had to have it.  Remembering that she had some birthday money left over, she walked out of the store with her new favorite treasure.  Her daddy watched her with her necklace and he loved that she felt beautiful in them.  One night while tucking her into bed, he asked his daughter if he could have her pearls.  She couldn’t even believe he would ask such a thing! Of course not, not these pearls!  “Okay, sweetheart,” he told her as he kissed her goodnight, “maybe another time.”  A few nights later, same story, “Darling, would you give me your pearls?”  “Daddy, I simply cannot!  I love my pearls more than anything.”

A few weeks passed and one night her dad went in to kiss her goodnight and he noticed that she was crying.  As he stroked her hair, she looked up at him with a tear stained face and held up her closed fist.  “Dad, I’ve been thinking about it and if you really want my pearls I will give them to you.  I love you more than my pearls.”  As she handed her dime store strand of pearls to her daddy, he reached in to his pocket and presented her with a beautiful box.  She opened her box to find an authentic, valuable strand of pearls.  “Sweetheart, I have been waiting for you to release your cheap counterfeit set of pearls to me so that I could replace them with the real thing.”

What a beautiful picture of what the Lord would do for us.  What are we holding onto for fear that if we let it go it will be final?  Or what cheap imitation are we accepting out of fear that the real thing is too far out of our reach?

You know, sometimes, He just needs our hands empty so He can fill them with His blessing.  He knows the desire of our hearts and when He becomes our greatest desire, our highest thing.  He is able to bless us over and above all we could ask or imagine.

I don’t know about you, but I am ready to release brokenness and receive His joy.  It doesn’t mean that we are giving over our memories, our love, or our loved ones.  It simply means that when we hand our broken hearts to Him, He returns them fully alive ready to experience life once again.

I love you,