The Necklace
“Whatever you’ve lived through can mark you for good and for your good…”
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17 CSB)
I took off a necklace today which I haven’t removed for over three years. It’s the last gift I received from my stepmom on our last Christmas together in 2019. It was a cheap, $20 Amazon necklace—a fake opal. And I adored it. It made her so proud that I adored it. I don’t know why I never took it off for that first year after she gave it to me. But I know exactly why I never removed it after January 1, 2021—the day she passed. It felt like a connection to her.
I held the necklace in my hand, looking long and hard at it for the first time because it hurt to really look at it. Lately I’ve grown increasingly worried that something will happen to it—that I’ll lose it or that it’ll break—so, I decided to take it off and put it in a safe place. As I held it under my bathroom light, I noticed how much it had changed since the day I unwrapped it on the sofa of my parents’ home, surrounded by Christmas and magic, totally unprepared for what was coming.
The chain is an entirely different color. Once bright gold, it’s now a tarnished silver—worn from years of water and sweat. The opal really doesn’t resemble an opal anymore. It’s an orange, rusty color—dimmer and less vibrant. But it’s still beautiful to me.
The necklace looks nothing like it did before. And neither do I.
In many ways I don’t resemble the woman I was before my life was marked by grief. The first year was intense, but God was using loss and grief to increase my faith in Him and to deepen my love for Him. He somehow turned it into something of beauty.
You’ve probably walked through something similar. And my bet is when you look at yourself, you no longer resemble who you were before. Maybe it changed you for the better, but maybe it didn’t. I want to encourage you if that’s the case.
1. Look back.
Whatever you’ve lived through can mark you for good and for your good even if it’s years later. Travel back. Trace the hand of God in your life. Where did He sustain you when you didn’t think you could keep going? When did He work out a detail you couldn’t have orchestrated? It isn’t too late to look back and give pain over to the Lord. It isn’t too late to look back and acknowledge His presence there.
2. Let it mark you.
Grief changed me, but praise God, it changed me for better. Pain led me to the Father. It caused me to recognize this isn’t home. It opened my eyes wider to God’s complete goodness—absolute goodness which isn’t conditional on my circumstances. And it propelled me to take some steps of faith I had longed to take for years, resulting in a total change of life in my career. If you handed your circumstances over to God, if you looked for Him, how could it change you? How could it make you more aware of His love and His goodness? How could it impact your family and your children? Let it mark you.
I’ll miss wearing this necklace every day. It was more emotional to take it off than I thought it would be, and that seems silly. As I held it in my hands, I felt as if I was holding tangible evidence of the change in my heart. What do you hold now? What about your life can serve as a reminder that God mercifully and continually transforms us? We aren’t static. Praise God, He works everything together for our good, redeeming even pain and brokenness for beauty.