09/09/2025
🍂 Beauty for Ashes 🍂
As my husband and I sat talking Sunday morning, I couldn’t help but feel the excitement of stepping into a new season, which happens to be my favorite season, fall. There’s something about this time of year that always brings joy and stirs memories in me. Yet as I reflected, I also remembered a time when fall wasn’t so joyful.
One particular year, what should have been a beautiful season quickly turned into ashes. That year, I could have lost my life on several occasions. That fall carried into a winter that felt like the darkest I had ever known. As I shared with my husband, flashes of a gun being pointed at me returned to my mind, along with the sound of my own voice begging for my life.
But here’s the beauty, God didn’t leave me there. He revealed my deliverance in several dreams, but there was something required of me to actually walk it out! I finally did the one thing I was afraid to do and that was go through surgery! But after waking up in the recovery room in my dream, I let out a long sigh! It was a sigh of relief that I made it through! I didn’t die in the process! 🙌🏽
We have to be willing to let go of things in order to embrace what God has for us! Sometimes it’s painful but as the loving Father that He is, He wants to give us His best! He took those ashes and gave me beauty in their place. He gave me life, restoration, and a new reason to rejoice in this season. What once represented fear and brokenness now reminds me of His faithfulness and power to redeem.
I ended our conversation by saying, “God knows what we NEED.” And He truly does. Even in the darkest seasons, He is working things out for our good.
Know this, the same God who gave me beauty for ashes can do the same for you. 🍂✨
“To console those who mourn in Zion,
To give them beauty for ashes,
The oil of joy for mourning,
The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;
That they may be called trees of righteousness,
The planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.”
—Isaiah 61:3 (NKJV)
