Broken Umbrellas

It snowed the day of my grandson's funeral. Pure grace blanketing dirty mounds of earth. Through my tears, my gaze fell on a sagging blue umbrella suspended over the head of a woman grieving our tiny loss with us. New tears sprang from within me, from depths I didn't know existed. Not from the loss of my precious one, but from this old umbrella, broken and twisted, yet hovering and flapping above this woman. It offered no protection at all from the wetness dropping from the sky, yet she clung to it. Broken and unsheltered. Could anything symbolize my heart and all humanity better than this crippled umbrella? And then she did something that tore me apart. She moved her brokenness in an attempt to protect the man beside her. ~*~ We are all surrounded by brokenness, around us and inside us--from divorce, from abuse, from loss. We try to relate and serve, to love and protect...but how can we, when we ourselves are broken? We still end up exposed to life's storms. We still end up covered in snow. And we wonder why. In this transparent and honest look into humanity's deepest hurts, hope for our relationships comes through the ultimate Relationship with the Lord. Join author Emma Broch Stuart as she travels that snowy road of pain toward the ultimate healing only God can offer.