“𝐎𝐡, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭’𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐲, 𝐛𝐫𝐨𝐤𝐞𝐧 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐟𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐥𝐞.”

Pansies grace my front porch, their faces bright and open, defying the cold that lingers when other blooms retreat. It’s almost laughable how the name pansy has become an insult, a pejorative tossed carelessly to suggest weakness. But those who say so have apparently never watched these flowers stand unbowed beneath the frost—impervious to the cold. They have never seen the way pansies persist, not because the winter is easy, but because it is not.

I think about that often when I see them blooming, deep red and white against the gray. People have called me strong, sometimes as if they suspect the worst must be over. But I know the truth. Strength isn’t the absence of pain. It’s surviving it. It’s finding the will to grow even when the world has gone cold.

Two things can be true at the same time: I have been broken, but I am in bloom.

When I lost my sweet Jimmy, I didn’t feel strong. I felt shattered, a thousand sharp edges of the life I’d loved lying in a heap. The weight of loss pressed down with a force that threatened to swallow me whole. And just when I thought I’d endured the worst, injustice and abandonment came like a bitter winter wind, leaving me to reckon not only with grief, but with the kind of pain that hollows you out.

But here’s the thing about brokenness, it doesn’t necessarily make you fragile. The cracks, the fault lines, the jagged places—they all tell a story. Not of defeat, but of endurance. Just like the pansies on my porch, I did not bloom because the winter was kind. I bloomed because it wasn’t. Every bitter season forced my roots to go deeper, searching for what (or Who) could sustain me.

God met me there, in the cold, as present and unrelenting as the wind that cut through me. He did not spare me from it, but He carried me through. When I thought I could not bear another day, He held the pieces of my heart like a gardener tending fragile shoots, whispering life into what I had already mourned as dead. I have learned that grace doesn’t always come in the form of rescue. Sometimes it comes in the strength to stay, to stand, to endure.

To flourish.

The world assumes the unbroken, the tall, and the unscathed are the strongest. But I know better. Strength is the widow who gets up when the weight of sorrow tries to keep her down. Strength is the choice to forgive when bitterness offers its false comfort. Strength is loving again, trusting again, hoping again, and believing again that joy will return, even when the cold lingers.

I used to think healing would mean returning to who I was before. But now I see that healing is not a return; it is a becoming. I am not the same woman who once reveled in the warmth of easier days. I am more. I am someone who has walked through the winter and found life on the other side. My joy is no longer shallow, no longer dependent upon circumstances. It is rooted in the knowledge that even when everything falls apart, God never lets me fall beyond His reach.

I would never have chosen this road. Absolutely not. But I can no longer say it has only taken from me. Grief has pried open my hands and shown me the kind of joy that no circumstance can steal—the joy of knowing that even in the wreckage, I am held, by the One who knows me best and loves me most.

So, broken? Yes.
Fragile? No. Not anymore

Now I know better. I have seen those delicate petals droop beneath the weight of frost and then rise again with the morning sun. And I have done the same. I have been bent by sorrow, but I did not break.

I have been broken, but, now, thanks to my never-failing, everpresent Christ, I am in bloom.

May that ultimately be the story of all of us who have known (or will know) brokenness in one way or another.

“The little reed, bending to the force of the wind, soon stood upright again, when the storm had passed over.”
~ 𝐀𝐞𝐬𝐨𝐩

“A bruised reed shall He not break, and the smoking flax shall He not quench: He shall bring forth judgment unto truth.”
~ 𝐈𝐬𝐚𝐢𝐚𝐡 𝟒𝟐:𝟑,𝟒