Christmas is over.  All of the decorating, rushing, spending, cooking, wrapping, shopping, preparing, travelling, cleaning, serving………it’s over.  Holidays in America are exhausting and taxing.  On the heart, on the bank account, on the feet, on the families………

Add to the holiday shuffle struggle and loss.  In my little circle, the past couple of weeks have been especially tough on our immediate and extended family.  There’s been the sickness and death of a close relative.  There’s families grieving over the loss of loved ones and the emptiness of carrying on through the holidays and life’s routines, though their hearts are broken.  Our own family has been handed a tough reality this week (can’t delve into it at the present).  Sam has been terribly sick, which has been worrisome and taxing on everyone, especially him.

Been a stretch to find the ‘Merry’ in Christmas this year, ya know? Might as well just say it and coin a Lu-ism, “Well, it’s the truth!”

Christmas cards and Facebook rarely reveal what’s happening on the other side of the picture.

And I as I sit and type…..the north wind howls and we are in 15+ hours of torrential rain and not even through the worst of it…….

But yet I find an it’s opportune and very necessary time to be still and listen and draw close so the broken pieces of life can once again be glued back…….

The pleading and the wide open revealing of God’s heart breaks me inside when I read this passage again:

“Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel.  But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him. Then the word of the Lord came to me:

“O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does? Like clay in the hand of the potter, SO ARE YOU IN MY HAND.” Jeremiah 18:1-6

There is something so undeniably moving when you recognize the Lord’s heart and yearnings for His loved and treasured created – me and you. This brings me to my knees.

Whether through our own choices, or just the circumstances of life itself, how many times do we feel as a marred lump of clay, just spinning aimlessly out of control, crumpling, and crumbling?

The visions of what we want to become, how we think our lives should look like, be used for, or end up – what do you do when that shatters or the end product is deemed useless?

The choices: become hardened, brittled, and broken….

Or you bend, you become dampened and allow your heart to become porous, you quit resisting, you become moldable clay in the Potter’s hands, and allow yourself to be shaped into whatever seems best to Him.

It’s more than an empty invitation.  It’s not a ‘do-it-or-else-I’ll-toss-you’ threat from the loftiness of heaven’s throne.

No – it’s the pleading, the longing, the begging of God – to surrender to His loving care. It’s His desire for us. How can we resist such an honest, heart felt opportunity to draw close?

Why do we resist?  Why do I????

I was asked a few weeks ago to speak and share our family’s story to a group of very dear people.  I wanted to be real.  But do I dare share the honest and not so pretty truths of our lives?

This is precisely the subject of what kept pounding my brain as I thought for weeks on what to really say.

It’s the necessity of brokenness.  It’s the imagery of the Potter’s hands. It’s the plans He has for me in His head – because my plans are flawed and often misguided. It’s the picture of the vessel in His head, that He alone can use, and knows for what purpose it is to be used for, as seems best to Him.

Brokenness looks different and happens different for each of us.  But the cry out of it is universal: “I need help!”  And it’s universal that it is where we all must begin.

It’s not a popular mind set.  We are taught from infancy how to stand on our own two feet. Drilled to be self sufficient.  Guided and urged to take charge, take control, create our own happiness.  Never to be a wet lump of clay and dependent on the Master’s hands. That is too vulnerable of a position to be in.  That scenario might hurt.  That would mean the surrendering of our will and stretching beyond what is comfortable and familiar.

But yet – that is exactly what He pleads to our hearts and the broken shards from living this life.  Transparent, honest, gently, heart felt.

“Please be the clay in My hands and trust Me.” 

Whatever the situation is that threatens to or has left us marred, let’s begin the repair process by being moldable and yielding to the Hands that long to hold us.

I hear you Lord.  I hear you.

Thanks for reading – Annie