Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!
How inscrutable are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways!
For who has known the mind of the Lord
or who has been his counselor?
Or who has given him anything
that he may be repaid? // Romans 11:33-35
Once upon a time, I was left out. It’s simple enough, but as a little girl, it was a shock to my system. All of my friends were going to a party and I wasn’t invited. It was so confusing and it hurt. Eventually an invite came. I went and had fun. That initial jolt of rejection, however, stuck deep inside me.
Acknowledging the seemingly harmless circumstance didn’t change the truth of the wound. The feelings would surface every so often and I learned, as an adult, to rationalize them away. You are a grown woman, I would tell myself, who is greatly loved and richly blessed. Get over it!
As time went by, however, I got tired of having to reason with myself each time I felt rejected. I needed healing.
I had known about the incident for years. It was not “repressed.” But I had never considered giving it to Jesus and asking Him to shine His love and light into that memory. I really just wanted to forget it, but in reality I needed more than positive self-talk. I exposed this wound to the Lord and He healed me deeply.
The beauty of abandonment to the Lord is that His mind and counsel are beyond our understanding. The depth and riches and wisdom of God, for me in this sad memory of rejection, took those sad feelings and turned them into something glorious. As I gave that sadness over to the Lord, He handed me back a memory of absolute delight. My friends were all going to a party. Look how happy they are!
And here was Jesus, standing beside me as we watched. There was so much love—the Father’s love for me—that instead of fear and rejection I was filled with excitement and love. It only makes sense in God’s inscrutable economy.
God is so good. His ways are unsearchable! In a moment of grace we can turn our present, our future, and especially our wounded past over to Him——and He can take the broken and create something beautiful and new.
Rachel Balducci has a Masters degree from the Grady School of Journalism at the University of Georgia and teaches at Augusta University. She and her husband Paul have five sons and one daughter and are part of an intentional Christian community in Augusta, Georgia. Rachel is the author of several books and is the co-host of The Gist of CatholicTV. Find out more about her here.
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