Room Of Marvels

OK so I have been reading a lot lately and I have found some really amazing books one is ROOM OF MARVELS by JAMES BRYAN SMITH. I read it in just a few hours and had a really hard time putting down when I had other tasks to do like cooking and laundry which I did and quickly came back to it. I think everyone should read this book, but you may need a tissue handy as a few parts made me cry. I think it’s a true story or based on the authors life.
It starts with him driving to a monastery to have a time of rest and solitude. He has in the past few years lost his best friend, Daughter, and Mother, and is questioning God. He cant understand why God would allow this to happen to him and he has such grief for those who have died that he can’t get over. He is an author who writes books, about God and his Love yet feels torn and like a hypocrite for now not believing what he has written.
As a parent my self I can’t even imagine losing a child. But I have lost loved ones very close to me and I can understand his grief. As I was reading this book, my eyes were opened to how I respond to God in many of my life’s circumstances and I was ashamed and at the same time felt a since of relief as some of God’s truths were revealed to me. And overall I felt God speaking to me, in this book and through my quiet time . So if you get the opportunity to read this book or even better yet buy it. I plan to buy it so I can have my own copy to mark up. Those who know me know I like to highlight passages in books, that are especially meaningful to me and this being a library book I couldn’t do that so instead I wrote down those passages that really stood out to me that caught my attention. I can’t share them all here it would take a very long time to share. But I will share a few, and my response my feelings my thoughts about them. So I hope you enjoy!
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I Saw myself in that mirror, flawed, broken, wounded, and imperfect, but real. Nothing– no one is more beautiful than you __________(fill in your name) since God, Beauty it’s self, has fallen in Love with you.

~*~ That is how I see my self flawed and broken wounded and imperfect but I am starting to see that God has a plan for me in all this brokeness like the shared pieces of a stained glass window prior to being made into the masterpiece it was designed for.

You must let Him Love you as you are, not as you intend to be. Let Him Love you as you are with out a single plea for reform. It is all about Grace.

~*~WOW! Let HIm (God) Love me as I am? I thought I was doing this but the more I spend time with Him the more I realize I am not.

You want people to know you on your own terms, but your afraid to let them see the real you. You only let them see the mask. You created the mask to protect yourself. The mask is the way you manage what other people think of you. You let them see what you think they want to see, but they never get to see the real you.

~*~ When I read this it was like it cut deep. This is me! I am to afraid to take the mask off because I am to afraid that they won’t like the real me. Plus I have been wearing it sooo long I am not sure if I even know who I really am. This hit me especially hard this week because it was also reveiled to me during my quiet time, my prayer time this week with God. But I am working on this. I want to take off the mask and show the real me and figure out who the real me is.
Our brokeness did not keep him from calling us. Thank God for that!

We are more than our failures, more than our imperfections, and faults, We are so much mor but for me many times that’s all I can see the failure the faults, the imperfections.

~*~At one point in the story they are in his room of marvels and he sees these things from his past that were times when he showed others God’s Love in normal everyday kinda ways, ways he never even knew he was showing it. And that’s what I want to refocus my thinking on, those little every day kinda ways we show and share God’s Love….. Smiling at the cashier, standing up for those who can’t stand up for them selves, giving what we have in abundance with out thought to our own needs. When he saw these things he had done he was able to remove the mask and start seeing himslef as God sees him, and my prayer is that as I start being who God intened me to be that my mask will fade as well. That I won’t see the brokeness in myself any longer but instead I would see myself through His eyes.

God’s power is made perfect in weakness. Enough said!

The most beautiful stones are the one’s that have been tossed by the wind and washed by the water and polished to brilliance by life’s strongest storms.
There were several more passages that I wrote out and I hope to share them with you later but for now that is all. Have a Beautiful Day!
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Know you are Loved, Thought of, & Prayed for!