“I knew.” “Excuse me?” “I knew.” She drew the words out long, venomous. “I really am sorry, but I don’t know what you are talking about.” “You tried to cover up a crisis, but I knew!” She delivered these words like she had uncovered an adulterous affair, harsh and disgusted. She was seething. It wasn’t the first time. This time had to do with tablecloths, yes that’s right, and it was a memory that became an icon for many others to come of crazy chaos and difficult situations that did not feel redeemable.

Fast forward, I attended the wedding of a precious young woman I had mentored years earlier. I met her as she was transitioning out of jail and working through a program. She was in the middle of placing a child for adoption and working towards healing and recovery. It was an intense time and she did not finish the program. Her addiction leads her back to prison. She did her time, moved to another city and is now flourishing.

When we arrived at her wedding, I went behind the scenes to pray over her. Her daughter was sitting on a couch, the adoptive mom was sitting beside her. She was now nine years old and was dressed beautifully, waiting to accomplish her role as a flower girl. That goodness alone was almost more than my heart could handle. Her presence there was one of many symbols of redemption. My friend, looked at me shaking her head and asked, “Who in the world would have ever thought I would be getting married?”. My response, me! She burst into tears saying, “Yes, you so did, thank you for believing in me even when I didn’t believe in myself”. The makeup artist was not pleased, so we immediately began making jokes to pull it together again.

When I sat in the chapel that day and watched everything unfold, it was a continued fight to keep it together. All I remember repeating to God was “You Knew”. You knew this whole time, in the middle of heart-wrenching brokenness, full-blown addiction, prison, and quite frankly circumstances that were so overwhelming the ability to see how they could be turned around for good were but a flicker. You knew.

At that moment, He took words that had been spoken over me, ones that I had made to symbolize other actions and pain and gave them new life. For my friend, when she asked, He gave a new life there as well. He did it for her, He did it for me, and He will do it for you too. I am on the other side of so many things in this season of life. I dropped my daughter off at college and drove home thinking about how terrified I had been to be a mom, especially a single mom, again I told God, “You Knew”. He knew the whole time that we were going to make it and how He was going to provide. He knew how hard it would be, how inadequate I would feel and how incredibly beautiful a young woman my daughter would become.

I heard a song yesterday by Apollo LTD, and the lyrics of the bridge said,

“…the beautiful thing that you do is making new things out of ruins”

This I can adequately confirm is true. Time after time the situations that I thought were an absolute disaster were simply the rubble He used to rebuild something amazing.

You don’t have to know how He knows.