“No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.” – 1 Corinthians 10:13

It was 2005. My former husband Jon was serving his first parish in Minnesota, and things were imploding. Instead of dealing with frustration constructively, several people decided to make life so hellish for me that I stopped attending worship there and would just go to the church in town instead. (Jon’s parishes were out in the fields.) Other people were trying to get the dysfunctional people to behave, and one of them uttered the following:

“We’ll all be really shiny when this is all over.”

That saying has stuck with me in the last 16 years. We did eventually leave that parish and went to a slightly healthier place (at the time), but life has not stopped throwing curveballs. In the time since, I’ve had a child, had that child almost die several times, got a divorce, and fought with my own health issues… and I can say that the testing has made me “shinier” as a result.

Lord, help us to remember that you are with us in the midst of the things that test us. Amen.
-Jen McCabe