stacey_thacker.whatbreakswhatholds.001

Note: Originally posted April 24, 2017. You can also find a slightly longer version in Threadbare Prayer on pages 151-155. 

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My youngest daughter dropped my iPad just before I hurried out the door to go to church. With huge  tears streaming down her face she pulled it from behind her back and sobbed, “I’m sorry, Mommy, I broke it.”

For some reason I didn’t lose my mind over the shattering. I hugged her with a sigh of surrender, “Don’t worry about it. These things happen. We’ll talk to Daddy about it later when he gets home. Maybe he knows how to fix it.”

Later never came. A few hours later, her Daddy was in the ICU fighting for his life and fixing the broken electronic was forgotten. Obviously.

Broken. Shattered. Fix it.

That is what my heart cried out desperately. I didn’t have any eloquent words for Jesus. I also didn’t have long passages of Scripture. I had a single verse. It was enough.

The Lord is my shepherd I have everything I need. (Psalm 23:1)

 I preached that verse over and over to my soul that first night, the next morning, and then again all day Saturday when they told me it was bad. Very bad.

I breathed it in and breathed it out in the midst of the valley of the shadow of death for an entire month. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe it in my head. I did. But, my heart needed to be sure that when I broke apart completely it would hold.

I broke. But my Shepherd did not.

He held in every moment of fear, numbness, and on the other side of his answer. He kept pressing his promise to my heart.

The Lord is My Shepherd

I am your shepherd. You have everything you need.

It seems simple doesn’t it? Jesus didn’t complicate his provision with my need. This truth has become a constant cadence in my life. The sound of me needing him and him being absolutely enough.

The Lord is my shepherd I have everything I need.

He is all I need today when I’m not sure how I’m going to get over and through this. He will be all I need the next time something else breaks and I have no control of  the outcome. We both know it will, too. Because we live in a world that breaks, shatters, and cries out, “Fix it.” every day. Lord Jesus, our shepherd be near. 

His word is our promise. He is our truth. He does not break. He breaks through.

He holds.

Always.

xo,

Stacey

P.S. You can read a little bit more of this story here. “What I Want You to Know But I’m Afraid to Tell You.”  Words have been slow. I appreciate your grace.

**The Lord is my Shepherd graphic by Becky of  To Choose Joy.