Two years ago my life was dark. Despite the blazing June sun, I could only see clouds. I checked into a Ronald McDonald House, leaving my husband and kids behind because our new child still growing inside me was sick. I was 34 weeks pregnant with a baby who had a known kidney defect, but many more unknowns. After fetal intervention surgery, we spent the first 10 days of his life in the NICU. We came home, but health scares were around every corner. Almost a year before that we went through a miscarriage and three years before that our other son went through open-heart surgery.

What I learned from all of this, is that the sun comes out again.

When the sun comes out after a storm—it doesn’t erase the damage caused by the wind and rain. The landscape you knew may never quite look the same as it did before. Your most beloved part of the land may have been uprooted and now gone from sight. You might be living in a chronic storm, where the clouds roll in and back out over and over again.

But the bright rays will come and when they do there will be moments of peace, joy and even laughter. God uses the light to show you things you may have once overlooked. He can make new things bloom from the changing landscape. He can make a beautiful picture from the wreckage, not by erasing the broken pieces, but by using them to create a work transformed.

If you are sitting in the middle of a storm right now, the picture of your life may never look the same, but if you are living and breathing, know that the sun will come out again.

Jillian Benfield

Jillian Benfield is a military wife, mom of three, and one kid rocks an extra chromosome- also known as Down syndrome. She writes about faith, marriage, and parenting on her blog, www.JillianBenfield.com.