One year ago, I didn’t know my husband was investing in life outside our marriage. I didn’t know he’d look at me with a coldness I’d never seen in him and announce he no longer wanted to be married. I didn’t know that within a week we would tell our daughters, parents, and close friends, and meet with an attorney. I didn’t know I’d soon move out to begin setting healthy boundaries and begin to heal. I couldn’t fathom how I could begin to heal when I felt so torn apart.

And there are days I still feel that crushing and disorienting pain and confusion.

Yet I am constantly encouraged by God’s provision, strength, and wisdom.

When I opened my Timehop and read a post from a year ago, I smiled. I didn’t know what was going on behind the mask my husband wore. I didn’t know what devastating divisions were happening within my marriage. But God did. And he planted this seed: the lesson that my heart would be broken. In one way or another, it happens to all of us. It’s not the brokenness that defines us. It’s how we respond, how we allow God to use and work through the brokenness.

Do we wish the brokenness never happened? Absolutely. But we can appreciate the results of the brokenness without liking the brokenness itself.

Trust, faith, obedience, and humility lead us into an abundance we cannot imagine or understand.