This beautiful and meaningful blog was written by my daughter Grace Ladd McDonald. I pray your heart is strengthened through these words.

What a grace, what an absolute divine mercy it is to experience the humility of suffering, the state of dire need when we are no longer sufficient by our merits or efforts to hold our own. Nothing, no nothing can more propel us towards the most real and satisfying beauty we could ever know. But what is this beauty and why must agony and such profound grief serve as the portal to it? 

When you see the light of Jesus, the one who does not look away from those that even the most compassionate among us forsake, it is He alone which lifts us. The hand He offers is not one of material prosperity but rather eternal joy. We cannot comprehend this wildness so the tendency to move on is tempting. 

But stop. The still quiet One– amidst all the clutter and chaos of our roughest waves–calms, stills and saves us from the competing half-loves that beg our full commitment. We are made to recognize glory, but not wise enough to discern it from its mockers.

Wealth, power, sex are impostures of pleasure in the face of divine suffering. However, the desolation of sorrow  is pure and utter waste without arriving at The End it so aims to reach. I beg you in the face of despair to not look away. This Jesus that gives so generously of a spirit so sensual that our eyes are too dim to see, our ears too weak to hear completely will consume you with His love.

Open your hands to Him. I beg you not to look away. Receive the pain and breathe through it with the breath God has given you to live. It hurts. It hurts like the bitterest depths of hell. Look up. Look up now, the one who will not leave you has come so that even death has not the final word. 

Your final word is Love. That love is Jesus Christ. And this Christ is the Holy one God. No beauty will surpass Him, no obstacle prevent you from coming. So come, come in your grossest of sins, in your brokenness, in your deep anguish and shame. Love is real. If it is not, neither are you and neither is this pain. But your pain is real. It is so real.

Receive Love, this very indubitable, hyper-existent love. Look up and let Him fill you.

Visit www.flowerclvb.com to see more of Grace’s many gifts and talents.