Little Cabinet. Big contents.

I’ve been on a mission to eliminate a shelf that is in our family room so that I have more flexibility with the furniture arrangement. The shelf contains games, puzzles and a few toys for the grandkids, so all those items need a new home. One of my favorite things to do in my home decorating is to “shop” my own house. As I perused around the place, my eyes landed on an almost forgotten little end table that is in our sitting room. What in the world was in that little cabinet? I hadn’t opened it in years! So I went to investigate. What I unearthed occupied the rest of my evening because this cabinet had apparently been moved here twenty-two years ago and basically forgotten. Inside was a collection of old song books, piano books, and choral music from a lifetime ago. During my first marriage, I had been the choir director at our church. There were Christmas cantatas, children’s choir collections and random similar things. My mind traveled back as if it were yesterday. I was impressed with the memory of what I used to do that is no longer part of my identity. Some of it was pretty entertaining to see–like my extensive outline for children’s choir that included music theory training. Hey, I was originally a music education major so I had high hopes. These things never came to be because everything came to a sudden and heart-breaking hault back then. The break-up of my first marriage wasn’t a quiet one. Both my ex and I were very visible people at our church. His unfaithfulness shook the very foundations of my life and my response to the hurt was a series of decisions that I now know were made from that place of hurt and misguided thinking. It was messy.

I decided to go through the pile of songbooks and determine what, if anything, was worth keeping. I guess I was quite the Sandi Patty fan! I did hang on to a few books, but donated most of them. One of the songbooks made me stop in my tracks. I remembered this one. It was a collection of what were then considered contemporary Christian songs, many by Steve Green. I had purchased this particular book because I wanted one song, “Household of Faith”. I wonder if any of you readers remember that one. The lyrics are beautiful and meant so much to me (and I thought to my husband at the time). When we decided I would homeschool our children, the name of our school was Household of Faith Academy. Each morning we would say the pledge and sing the chorus together: “We’ll build a household of faith that together we can make, and when the strong winds blow it won’t fall down. As one in Him we’ll grow and the whole world will know we are a household of faith.” Reading through the rest of the lyrics, I broke down and wept. My life has not turned out the way I had pictured it. I never wanted my children to have divorced parents. I never wanted to hurt people with decisions I made. Oh my, it hurt my heart so much to be taken back to those days. All because I opened a cabinet that ended up being a closet with skeletons.

And then I stopped. Memories are good. But allowing the enemy to drag me into a whirlwind of regrets is not. When Terry and I married over twenty-two years ago, we had a song sung that I had written specifically for the occasion. The title is “New Beginnings”. It is based on Isaiah 43:18-19 which says, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” I reminded myself of these words. And then I started recalling all the “new things” that God has done in my life. He took my brokenness and tenderly reshaped me into a more loving and caring person who has learned to be slow to judge and quick to listen. When I consider all he has done in my children’s lives, it made me wonder if perhaps they are even better off than they would have been otherwise. Not because their father and I were bad parents before, but I think my brokenness simply made me a better person. And that probably made me a better mom. I don’t think I would be so deeply in love with Jesus if I hadn’t gone through my mess.

The unearthing of these memories made for a long, difficult evening, but ended with tears of gratitude. Friend, if you have never experienced the endless grace of God in your life and understood to your core the depth of love He has for you, I urge you to stop and consider this great gift we call salvation. He sent His Son Jesus to be broken for us. Sometimes it takes our own brokenness to fully comprehend what that means personally. Let’s not shy away from brokenness. Let’s embrace it and then run into Jesus’ arms, giving him the opportunity to put us back together better than we were before.

And so that little cabinet still stands in our sitting room, but it now contains a collection of children’s puzzles and likely will no longer be forgotten. I continue to search for a new home for the rest of this stuff and hopefully won’t have to go through anymore meltdowns in the process. But, if that’s what it takes for me to remember and be thankful for all God has done, so be it.