I am happy to feature words from Melissa K. Norris this Saturday. She is a Christian fiction romance author, newspaper columnist, and author of her award winning blog at www.melissaknorris.com. She found her own little house in the big woods, where she lives with her husband and two children in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State. Grow your faith and pioneer roots with her at facebook.com/melissaknorris and twitter.com/melissaknorris

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“You need to come in immediately. The test results show there’s something wrong with your pregnancy.” My legs buckled and I dropped to my knees in the bathroom at work.
They were wrong. We’d clear it up at my appointment.

False Hope
I clung to this hope until the next morning. “I’m sorry. You have a tubal pregnancy,” the doctor said. “The baby has stopped developing, and we have to operate first thing tomorrow.”

Bitterness
I’d lived my whole life obeying God’s words. I’d read the entire Bible through, saved myself for marriage, and this was how God repaid me?
It’s not fair, echoed through my heart.
After awaking from surgery, I learned they were unable to repair my fallopian tube. I only had one working fallopian tube, which meant half the chance of conceiving again.
“Why, God?” tore through my soul.

Breakthrough
While recovering I read The Scarlet Thread by Francine Rivers. This fictional book opened my eyes.
I cried out to Him. “Dear God, let my writing be like this book. Let the gift you gave me be used to touch people for You. Help anything that comes from my hand to edify You.”
This began my healing.
Following the commandments of the Bible does not make a relationship with God. The Pharisees knew the law, but they didn’t know Jesus when He stood among them.
I had been doing the right things, the right acts, but my heart hadn’t been close with God.
For the first time in a long time, I picked up my Bible, not out of duty, but out of the desire to hear God.

Healing
After hosting a baby shower for one of my closest friends, I came home battered. I read James 1:17 “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”

Revelation
God didn’t cause my baby to die. The good and perfect things in our lives come from Him, not the painful torn things. But because our God is full of love, He uses the hurtful things to bring us closer to Him.
If I hadn’t lost my child, I may never have come to the place where I had to lean on God&hellip.to where I gave up my own understanding and sought His.
Whenever something threatens to sweep me back to that place of sorrow, I read this from Hebrews 12:7 “Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father?”
God doesn’t cause hardships, but He uses them. Allow Him to turn the painful things in your life into something beautiful.

Q4u:

When has God not made sense? What trial has caused you to be bitter? What brought you through beyond bitterness?