My wife loves roses. I can go online and have a dozen sent to the house, and they’re so pretty when they show up. The same thing happens every time I send them: Kim always says, “You know I love the roses; they’re so beautiful.” It makes for a really great night.
It’s funny, because we love roses, and we love how beautiful they look and how wonderful they smell, but have you ever traced the source of those roses? If you do, eventually you’re going to find a field, and in that field you’re going to find a lot of manure. Nobody likes manure. Nobody likes the smell of manure, nobody likes the look of manure, nobody wants to be around manure. You do not go online and send some manure to your spouse, do you? Hopefully, you don’t. That would not go over well. But in order to get the rose, you have to have the manure.
I’ll bet anything you have a lot of manure in your past. If so, that’s your chance to thank God! Because if you can be grateful for the pain of your past, it can now be used to nurture great beauty. Your hurts can be transformed into blessings.
They say it often in Celebrate Recovery: God never wastes a hurt. And every one of those hurts we have in our lives, He wants to use for His glory.
If you’d like to learn more about how gratitude can change your life, click here.