Blooming Through Brokenness

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” —Romans 8:28 (NIV)

As we gathered around the bonfire, we sat close together, listening as the young people shared pieces of their lives. Some stories were light. Others carried wounds you could hear even in the silence between their words. One story, however, stayed with me—a story about a young girl who was only 14 years old. When she began to speak, I could hear the weight behind her words. She comes from a broken family and has been living with her grandparents.

For the past five years, she has watched her grandmother live with the effects of a stroke. Five years of watching someone she loves struggle something she cannot fix. Five years of quietly learning what it means to care for someone who is no longer the same. And while she was carrying that, her mother was working abroad. Her mother is far away—not because she does not love her, but because she is sacrificing her presence to provide for her children. Still, knowing the reason does not make the distance painless. She is fourteen.

She is at an age when a daughter still wants her mother nearby—to talk to her after a difficult day, to hear her voice when she is afraid, to celebrate small victories with her, or simply to know that someone is there. Instead, she has had to learn how to miss someone she loves.

She has had to grow up with an empty space at home. She has watched sickness change someone she loves, the one who used to take care of her was now the one she had to care for. She has carried family circumstances that no child should have to understand so early.

And yet, as she spoke, I noticed something that deeply moved me. Her pain had not made her bitter. Her circumstances had not hardened her heart. She still prays, worship, loves, and hopes. And somehow, in the middle of everything she has been through, she still chooses to trust God. That was the part that brought tears to my eyes. I understand that pain more than I wish I did because I have also experienced the consequences of breaking my own family. I know what it is like to look back at something broken and realize that some wounds cannot simply be undone.

Perhaps that is why this particular story stayed with me long after our bonfire gathering ended. I was not simply listening to her. I was seeing a part of my own story in hers. I knew what it meant for family to carry pain. I knew that sometimes children are left carrying consequences they never created. And perhaps that was why, as she spoke, something inside me became heavy. But then I noticed something even more beautiful. Her pain had not hardened her. Because she could have asked, “Why me?” She could have looked at her family and concluded that God had forgotten her.

She could have allowed her pain to become an excuse to walk away from Him.

But she didn't.

Instead, her struggles were teaching her something deeper. Her grandmother's illness was teaching her compassion. Her mother's distance was teaching her what sacrificial love looks like. Her family's brokenness was teaching her that even when the people around us cannot make everything whole, God can still be present in the middle of what is broken.

A broken family does not have to produce a broken future. God begin growing the most beautiful things in the places we thought were too broken to bloom. And that night, around a simple bonfire, I realized that perhaps I was not there only to listen to her story. God was reminding me through a fourteen-year-old girl that even in the middle of brokenness, faith can still bloom.

Name: Gospel Jay Ruiz/66th Batch

Mission Field: Loon, Bohol Philippines