What if adversity is just the path to becoming something beautiful and rare?

I recently asked Jesus to give me a new picture (He often speaks to me in images), and more often than not, the image i get in my spirit is Him and me on the ocean shore, sitting and talking, just being. This is no surprise, as the place where I've always connected most with God is near the water.

However, recently, we weren't sitting on sand. We were sitting on sea glass. There wasn't a grain of sand in sight, just miles of smooth, beautiful, unique sea glass. The significance of this sort of blew my mind because I'll be honest, I've never researched or even really thought about this unusual image.

Sea glass is the result of decades of being pounded by waves and conditioned by salt water, transforming discarded glass from shipwrecks and bottles that find their way to the sea. After years of being submerged in the earth's most challenging environment, if it doesn't sink to the ocean floor, it ends up on the shores of beaches worldwide, astonishing collectors with its beauty.

What was once viewed as trash is now treasure.

The sharp edges have been worn down, and the formerly slippery surface has developed a unique frosted texture that couldn't have emerged from any other element besides the salt surrounding it. What's more, certain shades of sea glass are rarer and more valued than others. These pieces typically take longer to curate and discover, as they were discarded long ago, and most are never seen again. It's the pieces that ride the waves and make it to land once more that find their way into the hands of those who recognize their value and beauty.

Do you see what I'm getting at here?

Some of us were thrown away, tossed aside, and forgotten, placed in circumstances and environments that, in reality, should have taken us out.

I know I was. While I never stopped believing in God, as a child and teenager, I was certain He must have forgotten about me. I felt like I was being violently slammed by one wave after another. A few times, I almost sank to the bottom. But God used those moments - when I lived in fear of the domestic violence in my home, when the painful hunger in my belly was unrelenting, when I was surrounded by men with a filthy agenda, and when I felt like the loneliest girl on Earth - to create something unprecedented. He used the struggles in my marriage, the seasons when I felt the loss of the babies who wouldn't be coming home through adoption, and the endless string of anxious questions in my heart to add texture to my testimony, which couldn't have been achieved any other way. He's been smoothing the sharp edges of my broken heart. Something rare. And I believe He's doing that for you in the season you're walking through.

You're not forgotten; you're hidden. You're being transformed. You're becoming. Sea glass is only considered sea glass after it journeys through the depths, but once it lands on the shore, the world sees what God saw all along. He is the God who sees me. The God who sees you.