Carol McClain

Do You Know What the Fruit of Sorrow Is?

by Carol McClain

 Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better.

 Eccl. 7: 2, KJV

As a new Christian and a single mom, I, like nearly every woman in the world, longed for a spouse. However, my first marriage left me with nightmares for years. I would never enter into a relationship like that again.

My prayer then became, “Lord, let me find someone to love. However, whoever you want me to date, let it be for real, not a flirtation, but the one you want me to marry.”

Enter “Kyle.” Kind, sensitive, a talented musician, a devoted and knowledgeable Christian with a desire for ministry. At every turn, our paths intertwined. We naturally started dating and talked of marriage (believe me–the chemistry was there). Because of my prayer, I assumed Kyle was my future husband, and I let down my guard. I gave him my heart, unreservedly.

Maybe two or three months into our relationship, he gave me the usual line: “I care about you, but I’m not ready for marriage.”

 

Then two weeks later, he started dating a good friend–a spacy, doubting, insecure woman (who l loved deeply, but the total antithesis of me and seeming to be everything Kyle supposedly disliked).

My life spiralled downward. I cried in my apartment after my daughter went to sleep. I needed comfort.

One night, I picked up my Bible. I prayed, “Lord, they tell me this book has all the answers to my prayers. Help me find comfort in you.”

Every night afterwards, I devoured the Word. I found it was better to go into the house of mourning because by my sorrow, my grief would be healed. This was followed by the Scripture that would be my mantra. Prov. 13: 12 ^“Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life.”

I didn’t know then that what my happiness needed was never Kyle. I needed the Lord. In my mourning (Matt: 5:4), Scriptures opened up to me. I believed the sudden understanding and ability to remember Scripture happened to every Christian. Years later, I found out many had a hard time understanding the Word.

Scripture comforted me, and my heartbreak revealed what would be my spiritual gift–teaching the Word of God.

For the next twenty years, I raised my daughter alone. When God had prepared my husband Neil’s life to meld with my own, Jesus allowed loneliness to overtake me once more. That grief put me on my path to marriage with Neil.

Throughout my trials–ones that come to everyone–God has proven his love for me. My faith grew. My belief in Jesus’s death and resurrection strengthened. My knowledge of my own inability to save myself solidified.

Truly, today, as I’m teaching The Sermon on the Mount in depth, I know the truth of the second Beatitude. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. (Matt. 5: 4)

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Borrowed Lives

Meredith Jaynes knows mourning. Comfort comes from the unexpected.

Distraught from recent tragedy, Meredith Jaynes takes pity on a young girl who steals from her. Meredith discovers “Bean” lives in a hovel mothering her two younger sisters. The three appear to have been abandoned. With no other homes available, Social Services will separate the siblings. To keep them together, Meredith agrees to foster them on a temporary basis.
Balancing life as a soap maker raising goats in rural Tennessee proved difficult enough before the siblings came into her care. Without Bean’s help, she’d never be able to nurture these children warped by drugs and neglect—let alone manage her goats that possess the talents of Houdini. Harder still is keeping her eccentric family at bay.
Social worker Parker Snow struggles to overcome the breakup with his fiancée. Burdened by his inability to find stable homes for so many children who need love, he believes placing the abandoned girls with Meredith Jaynes is the right decision. Though his world doesn’t promise tomorrow, he hopes Meredith’s does.
But she knows she’s too broken.