Bedsores and Butterflies

"I'm done peddling a Product I don't believe in anymore." Those were my words in 2010, after three dizzying years as a hospice chaplain. The suffering and pain that I encountered shattered all of my Christian clichés and religious ideologies. It also shattered the walls of grief and pain I had erected in my own life, revealing a hidden life lived in abuse and victimization. Everything was shattered. Turns out, shattered was the place of holiness.

It was in the shards that remained that I found Faith. Rising like a Phoenix from the ashes, the purpose behind the pain gave every one of those stories not just meaning, but beauty and power. Their stories, my stories, His Story. I share them with you here, that you may trade your ashes for beauty, and find the butterflies amongst the bedsores. Now, I believe it's time for me to fly!

-- Barbie Armstrong