March 16th, 2013 Elizabeth Smart

I haven't blogged for a while! But on Saturday March 16th I went to a devotional that Elizabeth Smart spoke at with my Mom up in Evanston. It was titled "Overcoming Adversity." She did such a good job! I can't imagine actually living the horrific incident that she went through.

I have had my ups and downs and good and bad days throughout the last year. On the day that I went to her devotional was a day I had just been thinking, "Where is the justice?" Selfish I know......Elizabeth spoke about the night that she was taken and some of the events that took place over the 9 months she was gone from her family until she was finally found. She spoke about how after she had been gone for a while she started wondering if her friends and family even missed her. Or how they probably wouldn't ever want her back because she felt so used and dirty from what had happened to her. She gave a scenario that as a child your mother may have had a very special vase that she loved. And that she would tell you often to be careful around it so you didn't break it....and that one day you ran by the vase and accidentally knocked it to the ground and it shattered into millions of little pieces. The vase was just sitting on the shelf innocently and yet it was broken....it was so broken that no matter how much super glue was used it could never be put back together or be the same again. She explained that was how she felt...broken, damaged, never to be the same again. I started to have tears go down my face....that is exactly how I have felt. My trial is nothing in comparison to her....but I felt used, damaged, broken, and I KNOW that I will never be the same again.

I have had to try to come to terms that yes 9 and a half months of my life were taken away that I can NEVER get back....but I can choose to be happy and to live my life to the fullest. Me being bitter or sad only hurts me...It is very possible that I will not receive restitution in this life, or get back what I lost....But it will be okay because God is a perfect God. He is a God of justice and mercy. All that was lost, all the hurt, all the fear, sadness, tears will be made up for in the next life. That is the hope that we can always hold on to when we go through trials and it is the hope I have to remind myself of on a daily basis.