Reed’s Reads of Wisdom Wednesdays™: Sometimes the Miracle Is That You Became Someone You Once Needed— When What You Survived Becomes Something God Can Use to Help Somebody Else
Sometimes we pray for God to change what happened to us when the greater miracle is what He eventually creates through us because it happened.
You may remember what it felt like to need encouragement and not know where to find it. You may remember being the child who felt different, the teenager who did not feel good enough, the young adult who desperately needed somebody older and wiser to say, “You are going to make it.” Maybe you needed a mentor, a protector, a patient listener, a teacher, a friend or simply somebody who understood what it felt like to stand where you were standing.
Then one day, without even realizing when it happened, somebody comes to you carrying a pain that looks strangely familiar.
They need encouragement, and you know what to say because you once needed to hear those words yourself. They need patience, and you remember what it felt like when nobody was patient with you. They need someone to believe in them, and suddenly you realize you have become the person you once prayed would show up for you.
That is a miracle too.
Second Corinthians 1:4 tells us that God comforts us in our troubles so that we can comfort others with the comfort we ourselves have received from Him. In other words, sometimes what God gives you in your hardest season does not stop with you. Eventually, somebody else may need what you learned there.
Wiseman J Knows What It Feels Like to Be the One Who Needs Encouragement
One of my favorite quieter moments in S.O.L.A.D.™: Soldiers of Light Against Darkness™: The Angelo™ & Angeline™ Chronicles happens between Wiseman J and Kevin Edwards.
Kevin has been training hard and begins talking about how good he feels physically. He also admits that he was picked on back home because of his weight. That experience affected how he saw himself, and like many people who have been ridiculed, Kevin remembers the hurt long after the words were spoken.
Wiseman J understands more than Kevin probably expects. He tells Kevin that when he was younger, he was repeatedly teased because he was not as tall as the other boys. But he also remembers what his mother taught him during those years. She taught him to love himself for who God made him to be.
That lesson stayed with him. Wiseman J grows up, joins the Army, becomes a leader and eventually finds himself commanding some of the same people who had once teased him. But years later, sitting beside Kevin, his greatest use of that old pain is not revenge. It is empathy.
Sometimes Healing Looks Like What You Give Away
Wiseman J could have allowed those childhood experiences to harden him. Instead, they became part of what allows him to recognize something in Kevin.
He knows what it feels like to be made to feel less than.
He knows what it feels like to carry words somebody else threw at you.
He knows how important it can be for someone to remind you that your worth is not determined by the people who laughed at you.
So Wiseman J gives Kevin something his own mother once gave him: perspective. He reminds Kevin that what matters most is that God sees him and that God’s approval matters more than the approval of people.
That is one of the beautiful things about healing. Sometimes you know you have grown because the thing that once wounded you becomes the place from which you know how to help someone else.
You know how to sit beside the lonely person because you remember loneliness.
You recognize insecurity because you have fought it.
You know how badly careless words can hurt because you still remember words somebody spoke to you years ago.
Your scar becomes a vocabulary.
You understand something somebody else is struggling to explain.
Kevin Is Learning the Same Lesson
Kevin’s story contains another beautiful layer to this idea because his mother taught him something similar. She told him that the people who picked on him might need his help one day. As a younger Kevin, that was not necessarily what he wanted to hear. He imagined getting revenge on the people who mocked him.
That is understandable. Hurt often makes revenge feel like justice. But as Kevin grows, he begins understanding what his mother was really teaching him. Helping people cannot depend entirely on how those people have treated you. If somebody else’s cruelty changes you into someone cruel, then their behavior has gained more power over your character than it ever deserved.
Kevin begins realizing that strength means refusing to let what somebody did to you determine what kind of person you become. That is growth.
Maybe somebody failed to encourage you. You can become an encourager.
Maybe somebody made you feel small. You can become the person who reminds others of their value.
Maybe nobody showed up when you needed help. You can become dependable.
Maybe you grew up wishing someone would listen without judging you. You can become a safe listener.
You cannot rewrite what happened, but you can decide what happens next because you were there.
Becoming What You Needed Does Not Mean What Happened Was Good
There is an important distinction here. We should never romanticize pain.
Something hurtful does not become good simply because something useful eventually grows from it. Being bullied was still painful. Being abandoned was still painful. Losing someone still hurts. Betrayal does not become acceptable because you later learned something from it.
God does not require us to call evil good in order to believe He can redeem what happened. Redemption means the wound does not get the final word.
What hurt you may have shaped part of your story, but it does not have to dictate the ending. God can take something that was intended to diminish you and develop compassion from it. He can take loneliness and create sensitivity toward lonely people. He can take rejection and teach you how valuable acceptance feels. He can take seasons when you desperately needed wisdom and eventually make you wise enough to guide somebody else.
The pain does not become the miracle. What God develops through you can.
Someone May Be Meeting the Answer to Your Old Prayer
Think about the people who come to you now. Maybe younger relatives ask you questions because they trust your judgment. Maybe coworkers seek your advice. Maybe somebody calls you when life gets difficult because they know you will listen. Maybe people tell you things they do not feel comfortable telling everybody else.
Have you ever considered what that means? There may have been a season when you were asking God to send someone like the person you have now become.
You wanted somebody patient. Now people describe you as patient.
You needed somebody to encourage your dream. Now you find yourself encouraging someone else’s.
You needed somebody to tell you that one mistake would not destroy your future. Now those exact words come naturally when somebody sits across from you believing their life is over.
Sometimes we spend so much time looking for dramatic evidence that God has changed us that we miss this quieter miracle. You became useful in the place where you were once hurting.
Wiseman J Does Not Mentor From Perfection
That is another reason Wiseman J works so well for this lesson. He is not a flawless mentor standing above everyone else with every answer. He carries his own history, regrets, questions and pain. He has experienced losses that still affect him, and there are moments when the people he leads have to encourage him too.
That actually makes his mentorship more meaningful. He does not guide Kevin, Juanita or Jeff because he has lived a painless life. He guides them partly because he has lived enough life to know what pain can do if it is allowed to lead you.
Sometimes the person best equipped to tell you to keep walking is somebody who knows what it feels like to want to stop.
Sometimes the person who teaches you how to survive disappointment learned the lesson through disappointment.
Sometimes wisdom is simply pain that refused to remain pointless.
Do Not Waste What You Learned
There are lessons you paid too much for to keep entirely to yourself. That does not mean you have to tell everybody your private business. Wisdom also means knowing which parts of your story are yours to share and when. But when God gives you an opportunity to help somebody using something you have learned, do not automatically dismiss your experience because you do not have a title behind your name.
You may know something because you lived it. A degree can teach valuable knowledge, but experience teaches things books sometimes cannot. The parent whose child has struggled may know how to comfort another parent. The entrepreneur who survived failure may know what the new business owner needs to hear. The person who rebuilt after losing almost everything may recognize hope in places someone else cannot yet see it.
Your experience does not make you the expert on everybody else’s life. But it can make you compassionate enough to walk beside them.
Be the Person You Wish Had Been There
There is something powerful about reaching a point where you stop asking only, “Why wasn’t somebody there for me?” and begin asking, “Who can I be there for now?”
That question does not erase what was missing. It transforms what you do with the memory.
You cannot go back and encourage the younger version of yourself, but you can encourage someone who reminds you of them. You cannot change the moment when someone made you feel worthless, but you can become intentional about making sure the people around you know their worth. You cannot rewrite every lonely season, but you can notice the person standing by themselves and make room beside you.
You may never know how much that moment means to them. But you know how much it would have meant to you.
Declaration for the One Becoming What They Once Needed
Speak this over your life:
I will not allow what hurt me to be wasted.
I will let God heal what needs healing and teach me what I need to learn.
I will not become cruel because someone was cruel to me, unavailable because someone abandoned me or discouraging because someone failed to believe in me.
I will allow my experiences to deepen my compassion without allowing my wounds to control my identity.
When God places someone in my path who needs encouragement, wisdom, patience or hope that I can give, I will remember what it felt like when I needed those things too.
I will thank God not only for bringing me through, but for allowing what I learned along the way to become a blessing to somebody else.
Final Thoughts
Some miracles arrive suddenly. A door opens. A prayer is answered. Something impossible changes.
Other miracles take years before you recognize them.
One day you are the child who needs encouragement. Years later, you are sitting beside someone else telling them not to give up.
One day you are wondering whether you are good enough. Years later, somebody struggling with the same insecurity trusts you enough to ask how you overcame it.
One day you need somebody to see something valuable in you.
Then one day, you become the person who sees it in somebody else.
That is part of what I see in Wiseman J and Kevin. Wiseman J carries forward something his mother gave him and places it into the life of a younger man who understands some of the same hurt. Kevin carries wisdom his mother gave him too, learning that people who hurt us do not get to decide who we become.
That is how light travels. Someone pours into you. You grow. You heal. You learn. Then somewhere down the road, somebody needs exactly what God has been developing inside you.
Second Corinthians reminds us that the comfort we receive can become comfort we give. So when you look at how far God has brought you, do not only ask whether your circumstances changed. Look at who you became. Because sometimes the miracle is not simply that you survived what you needed somebody to help you through.Sometimes the miracle is that you became the person you once needed.
Step Deeper Into the S.O.L.A.D.™ Journey
If this message spoke to you, step into the world of S.O.L.A.D.™: Soldiers of Light Against Darkness™: The Angelo™ & Angeline™ Chronicles.
Behind the superheroes, demons and battles are people learning how faith, pain, relationships, mentorship and responsibility shape who they become. Wiseman J, Angelo™, Angeline™, Jeff and the others do not simply fight darkness around them. They are constantly deciding what their experiences will produce inside them.
You can purchase your autographed copies of Book I and Book II directly from my bookstore at:
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