We often meet our one true god at rock bottom

Divorce was the rock bottom in my life.

I could never have articulated it at the time, but until divorce, my entire life had been a downward spiral. Five plus decades of falling, falling from one dark phase to the next, until landing in the darkest pit of them all.

Divorce.

Divorce, the place where I could no longer hide from the spiral. Where I could no longer pretend darkness and grief and loneliness weren't the true setting of my life. Divorce, where I had to start facing the world no longer capable of acting like my life wasn't spinning.

One of the cruelest talents some of us develop in life is being able to pretend life is together when it's actually free falling into a bed of rocks.

There are days I wish that hadn't been my talent. There are days I wish I could have landed on the rocks decades earlier, maybe the thud wouldn't have felt as violent; maybe I wouldn't have drug as many people as I have down with me along the way.

I catch myself wishing that, until I am reminded that God is going to use every one of my rocks to rebuild my life. That is not a celebration of the rocks; recognizing God's plan simply makes me more capable of rebuilding my life.

Pastor Ashley Wooldridge says, "when you reach rock bottom, the only place left to reach is up, not inward to yourself."

Many of us hit rock bottom because we never learn to reach up. We never learn to reach up to others when we are living in darkness. That begins a painful cycle. A cycle of spiraling into deeper and darker darkness as we collect more unhealthy ways to hide from the darkness.

All the while, foolishly thinking, I've got this.

It's amazing how deaf you can become to your own falling screams while frailly whispering to yourself, I've got this.

It is a brutal reality that the only thing that stops those screams, the only thing that ever makes us aware that we never EVER had it at all, is rock bottom.

Yet, it's also incredibly beautiful, that the one you've been running from all your life, or, at other times, the one you've been looking to the sky and pointing fingers at, there he is, in the pit, as if having grown weary of you pointing at the sky and not reaching into it.

There he is, even in his weariness, ready to catch you.

There he is, right there, the only one who has known the full extent of your freefall, right on time, to catch you. To catch you and assure you, this is not a fall to your death, this is the solid foundation of an amazing rebuilding project.

I want to encourage you today, that if you are falling but can't hear your own screams, reach out to someone who might hear them better than you. Maybe that's never been what you're good at, reaching out. But reaching beats rock bottom every time.

I want to encourage you, if you have someone in your life who you think might be falling toward a rock bottom, don't try to coach them or shame them away from the rocks. Ask them about the darkness that is consuming their fall.

And if you are there. If you are at rock bottom. If you are there feeling like you can no longer do this alone. You have depended on you your whole life and now you no longer have even you, so this must be the end.

I encourage you. Look around.

You feel like you are somewhere you never should have landed, but God feels like he has you right where you need to be.

Where you need to be to begin rebuilding an incredible life.

There is nothing we humans are worse at than getting up from darkness on our own. How great, then, that God has no greater strength than raising people from their own dark graves.

So give him your hand and let him raise you.

You have a rebuilding story to live.

It starts with rising from your rock bottom.