I’ve been a house mom in the Beautiful Dream Society human trafficking shelter for a little over a year. So many memories flow from this experience: memories of joy, pain, and sometimes an overwhelming feeling of not knowing why quiet little me is working there. Each time though, God reminds me that one of the most honoring things in this life is to have the opportunity to walk with each other through our pain and into healing. Each of these women’s journeys into healing have shown me how our lives are canvases the Lord paints, and with each stroke, He makes something beautiful.
This experience has shaped me more than anything else. I started with the idea that I was going to be the one making a difference in the lives of the women in the shelter; however, I’ve been humbled to see that they are the ones who have actually made a difference in my life. To have gone through so much pain, so much heartache, and so much darkness, these women have a spirit and a resilience that astounds me.
One such moment, one that will go with me the rest of my life, happened last year. On an icy winter morning, I was in busy in the kitchen when the woman we were serving came running through the back door where she had been smoking. “Megan, Megan, Megan! Come quick” she yelled. I ran to the backyard with her as she pointed to the fence and exclaimed, “Look, it’s a cardinal!” Baffled by her outburst at an ordinary cardinal, I just looked at her and smiled. She then went on to give me a lesson that has changed my life. “You don’t understand,” she said. “After living in darkness for so long, color means so much. It attracts us.” Though I don’t remember her exact words, the meaning of our conversation still brings me to tears. That cardinal, that little ounce of color, in the midst of an icy winter was God showing her beauty from pain, light from darkness. To her it was hope. I would have gone without thinking about, or probably even noticing, that cardinal. But she knew what it truly means to see beauty in the midst of pain, to find color in the midst of darkness.
In that one moment, God used her to get my attention. I find beauty in what most people spend their lives overlooking: the way winter gives way to spring where life begins to birth again; the way the endless sky seems to touch the grass; renewal that comes from rain; the flowers, birds, and trees; how something that is broken holds the promise of beauty; finally that there’s even beauty from pain at all. Maybe that’s because our perspective changes, or because we have to go through darkness to know that there is light; maybe we have to experience pain first in order to find joy, and become broken to know the meaning of healing, growth, and restoration. Maybe it takes all these different seasons to see beauty. After all, God did promise to make all things beautiful in their time, so if things never changed how would we learn to truly see? To feel? To live?
-Megan Snodgrass