A few winters back, before California’s drought, I remember seeing snow on the pines. Big piles of snow about breaking the branches. How do the trees bear it? I wondered.

And then one day I knew. After breaking, I knew.

You grow back.

After breaking, you grow back. Stronger.

“I’m on the edge of it happening,” she told me with panic in her eyes. “I’m about to lose it.”

I pulled her into my arms, whispered in her ear, “Then lose it. It won’t be the end of the world. Sometimes when you lose it, really lose it, is when you really find it.”

“Find what?” She asked in tears.

“The sufficiency of Him,” I said.

“God?” she asked.

“He’s at the end of you,” I promised. “When our strength fails, His is there. Trust me on this. God is there at the end of yourself.”

“The hardest part,” I tell her, “is getting to the end of yourself.”

Who wants to reach the end of their self?

I know I didn’t want to go there. But on a Sunday morning in church under the redwoods of Mt. Hermon, I let go. I told God, “I’m wholly and completely yours, do what you have to do with me, Lord.” And the next day it happened.

I broke.

I broke so badly, I ended up in an ambulance, and then in the hospital.

It was horrible.

But it wasn’t the end of the world. It was the end of myself, but God met me at the end of myself and healed me there.

And since then, I’ve grown back stronger. And the reason I’ve grown back stronger is because I know exactly where my strength lies now.

In the Lord.

My strength is in the Lord.

The Lord of the sun and snow and wind and the pines. The Lord of the breaking and the binding up of the broken. God is there.

Don’t be afraid to break.

You just may find you grow back stronger.

For He wounds but he binds up; he shatters, but his hands heal. Job 5:18