I used to think the greatest tragedy of my childhood was everything that was taken from me.
My innocence.
My safety.
The ordinary, forgettable childhood every child deserves.
And those losses were real. God never asks us to pretend evil was anything less than evil.
But over the years I’ve begun to notice something unsettling.
Sorrow doesn’t only take.
It makes room.
It has a way of clearing out all the flimsy things we would have trusted if they had never been shaken. It strips away the illusion that this world can satisfy us, that people can save us, that comfort is permanent. It’s a brutal teacher, but it leaves behind an unusual kind of emptiness.
An emptiness only Christ can fill.
I don’t thank God for the abuse. I thank Him that He refused to let it have the final word.
Because somewhere along the way, my greatest loss became my greatest invitation.
I met a Savior who doesn’t merely sympathize with suffering. He entered it. He was betrayed, mocked, beaten, abandoned, and crucified. The God I worship is not distant from sorrow. He carries scars.
Looking back, I can see that the ache I carried as a child became a hunger that nothing in this world could satisfy. Success couldn’t. Relationships couldn’t. Even healing couldn’t.
Only Christ could.
If my life had remained full of the things I thought I needed, I wonder if there would have been room for the One I actually needed.
That doesn’t make suffering good.
It makes God astonishing.
He has a way of taking the empty rooms sorrow leaves behind and making them places where His presence dwells. Not because pain is holy, but because He is.
The enemy emptied my childhood.
Christ refused to leave it empty.
B 🤍
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