This cross…

I have hated this cross on my shoulders.

I won’t dress it up with polished words.

I won’t pretend it hasn’t felt heavy, splintered, crooked, rubbing raw the very place I begged God to heal.

I have looked at others, their loads, their visible victories, and I have felt frustrated that this was the assignment placed on my back.

This weight.

This wilderness.

This silence that stretches into years.

I have cried, “Take it off!”

I have prayed, “Trade it in!”

I have whispered through clenched teeth,

“Surely this is not the story You meant to write for me.”

But God did not rush to remove it.

He did not apologize.

He did not offer me the escape route I wanted.

Instead, He stayed close.

Close enough for me to feel Him weeping with me… and still saying, “Carry it.”

And somehow,somehow, I did.

I carried it through rooms of disappointment,

through the valley of unanswered prayers,

through the silence of people who didn’t know what to say, and the shame of my own unmet expectations.

And in the carrying, something happened.

I looked back one day and noticed,

the shape of this cross fit me.

It traced the outline of my pain,

but also of my calling.

It carved into the flesh of my pride,

but also exposed the marrow of mercy.

The cross I hated became the frame of my life.

Not a burden anymore, but a blueprint.

A scaffolding of suffering that displayed His glory in ways I couldn’t see before.

Ways that whispered to the broken,

“You’re not the only one.”

I see it now.

The tears.

The loss.

The ache that would not leave.

It was not wasted.

It was a canvas.

My life now bears the brushstrokes of a God

who does His most breathtaking work

in shadows and silence.

A God who does not shy away from the brutal,

but leans in and redeems it.

So today, I trace my fingers along this cross—

this once-hated, now-holy thing—

and I whisper,

“You knew all along.”

You knew I didn’t need ease.

I needed encounter.

I didn’t need a platform.

I needed a place at Your feet.

I didn’t need to be delivered from the pain.

I needed to discover You in it.

And now, this cross has become my confession:

I have seen the Lord here.

And I am not the same.