My heart is smiling today.  For a couple reasons.

First, dear friends of ours welcomed their 6th child late last night. They are a military family whom Kenz helped with babysitting, errand-running and home-schooling for her last few years of high school. And we think so much of them, they are the ones who would raise our kids should Todd and I both pass away (at which point they’d have NINE kids! Yikes!)

Secondly, today in rural Michigan, a wedding will take place. And a dear, loved and life-long covenant friend will rejoice in the God who grants second chances.

Without going into detail, nor debating the whole remarriage hot-button issue many Christians love to banter about, let me just say that we in our family witnessed first hand over the last year-and-a-half the God who rescues, redeems and renews.

Just fours years ago we saw our friend’s world come crashing down.

Betrayal, bewilderment and abandon reared their ugly heads.

Circumstances swirled and whirled about to the point that darkness and depression set in.

Our friend suddenly sat smack-dab in a placed never dreamed of: in the midst of an unwanted and ugly divorce.

There were days we wondered if we’d wake up and discover the awful headline of suicide. That sweet children would left without their parent because life had dealt such a horrific blow that recovery was utterly impossible.

But God…..

Those two little words have popped up all over the place lately in books and articles and blogs. However, they were first penned many years ago in the pages of the Bible.  Whenever things were looking bad and it appeared that Satan was winning, those two words popped up on the pages “But God…”

And the story turned out just the opposite of what seemed to be happening.

Today, a dear friend will be given a second chance to live out a strong commitment to biblical marriage, just as they always intended to decades ago.  It seemed all hope was lost of being one half of a til-death-do-us-part marriage that would last a lifetime.

But God……

When things look bleak and you today and you are just sure the ending is going to be bad; very, very bad, remember those two words…

“But God….”

“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done” Genesis 50: 20

I’m off to find me some tin cans. There is a certain car I gotta go help decorate…..