Be More Than What Breaks You

In a few weeks, I’m speaking at the Joy In The Journey Conference.

This conference is for foster and adoptive moms to find encouragement, support, and connection with one another.

The theme this year is Even If, and it’s based off of the Bible story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who were thrown into the fiery furnace because they refused to bow down and worship an image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up.

As I was working on my main session this week, I was thinking about one of the phrases in the biblical text.

After they are thrown in the fire, the text says in Daniel 3:27, “They saw that the fire had not harmed their bodies, nor was a hair of their heads singed; their robes were not scorched, and there was no smell of fire on them.”

And it got me thinking…When I go through my own “fires” or “storms,” do I come out of them “smelling like smoke”?

Do I allow the challenges I face to change the person I am? To make me bitter? To make me angry? 

For the longest time, after a very hard season in my life, I think I DID smell like smoke.

I became known by my storms. They defined me. 

My husband and I watched the show This is Us a few years back when it came on, and there was one line in a Jan 2021 episode that stuck with me so much I wrote it down.

The quote was…

“Don’t let your broken heart be all that you are.” 

For the longest time, I did that.

I allowed my brokenness to consume me.

But I’m not doing that anymore. And I want to challenge you to be more than what breaks you too.

Like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, realize that you can walk through a fire and come out without the smell of smoke on you.