Verse of the Day – May 22, 2026
He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. — Colossians 1:17
I started this series with a framework in mind – specific points I wanted to cover about each verse: teachable context, historical background, a look at the Greek or the Hebrew. Today’s verse deserves something different. Today the study becomes testimony.
Today I am looking into the mirror, and realizing that I have always been one. What we reflect out into the world matters – not more than the Word, but because of it. And I want to be raw, not polished, with you today.
Sometimes, when I sit down to really think about what God has been doing in my life – consciously, without the distraction of the next thing on the list – I go somewhere else for a minute. I trail off. I get quiet in a way that, if you were sitting across from me, might make you look at me as though I were a pink elephant for a moment, or quietly wonder if I need medical attention.
I don’t. I’m just overwhelmed by Him. Not in a bad way, though. It’s… awe. Pure, all-consuming awe. And how could it not be like that? If you knew the whole story, you’d be frozen in awe, too. Likely, you have your own – so I’m sure you can empathize.
Then
The last fifteen years have been a lot. I don’t say that lightly or for effect.
Cancer. What an evil, terrible disease.
Alzheimer’s. The most evil, the most terrible… and the most heartbreaking to watch because it’s such slow motion. It’s truly torturous.
With all of it, there was the caregiving that stretched across years and left me hollowed out in ways I am still discovering. I haven’t really been around, even in my own body, for years. At least, that’s how it feels as I meet myself again. Maybe even for the first time, in some ways.
Loss after loss… some brutal and gross, some quiet and surrounded with peace, all humbling and life changing in their own way.
And after? It became compounded grief – the kind of grief that doesn’t announce itself politely and then leave. The kind that moves in. The kind that stacks up too quickly, so you carpet sweep it with, “I’m fine.” It’s a survival mechanism, but is it really? It ultimately suffocates your soul because it eventually sucks you under the carpet with it. It requires a hard reset, not a rest-and-relax reboot – that’s where I’ve been, and still am to some extent.
Layered underneath all of that was my own mess. Mistakes. Choices I am not proud of. Things I did in good faith that turned out to be wrong assumptions with complicated consequences. Things I did that were simply wrong, with no good-faith defense available.
I’ve made no secret of how angry I became at God, mostly confused and wondering where He was. Why wasn’t He helping me? Well, He was. But I couldn’t see that in the midst of the worst of it.
I couldn’t even see it when it was literally staring me in the face, through the prettiest eyes I’ve ever seen, because I was too busy believing I was supposed to lead her to Him – not the other way around.
There was so much external chaos – especially in the medical system – that I had no control over, and there was so much internal chaos that I very much helped create.
And here is what I know now, confirmed by this “random” but perfect verse of the day, standing on the other side of more than I ever thought I could survive:
He was not only there in the midst of it, even when I turned my back on Him. He was before all of it, and still there after, despite my turning my back. I simply had to turn my face toward Him, and surrender. And in Him, somehow, all of it did – and most importantly, is – holding together.
Not in spite of the wreckage. Through it.
He is the only mirror I want to hold up today, but I can only do that through showing who I was and who I am, honestly and without fear (see yesterday’s verse).
Now
The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. — Psalm 34:18
I used to read that verse and find it comforting in a general, greeting-card kind of way. I believe it now the way you believe in gravity – not because someone told me it was true, but because I have felt it catch me on the way down, more times than I can count.
There are moments I nearly didn’t survive. There are relationships that nearly didn’t survive. There are seasons and my own health crises I nearly didn’t survive in ways that are far less metaphorical than they sound. And somewhere in the middle of all of it – in the fire, not after it – He was there.
He was not making it stop because it was all necessary. But He was there, holding what I could not hold, and waiting for me to see. Don’t ever let anyone – even yourself – convince you that He is not a patient God. He absolutely is.
The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. — 2 Peter 3:9
Today
But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord. — Malachi 3:2-3
Anything good anyone sees in me today is just God. I mean that with everything I have. It comes from being sometimes carried, sometimes dragged, by Him through the refiner’s fire, and Him giving my heart the strength to beat at all.
I fear that will be read as false modesty, but it is not. It is the most accurate thing I know how to say about myself right now. And this reminds me of another Scripture I understand today is more than mere metaphor:
This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. — 2 Corinthians 5:17
I am not who I was. Some of that is painful to look at. Who I was, who I had become, who I hurt, what I did, what was done to me that I absorbed as identity for far too long. But the new creation is not just a theological concept I find interesting. It is my actual life. I have not only lived it, but consciously watched it happen. I am watching it happen still.
I do not fully have the words for it yet. I hope someday I will. For now, I just want you to know it is real. That He is real. That the fire is real, and so is what comes out of it.
A Closing Thought
But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. — Romans 6:22
That is what Verse and Vision is. That is what this blog is. This is not a platform, not a brand, not a performance… just someone who went through some things, as we all do. Someone who made some choices she is not proud of, had things happen to her she never would have chosen, but came out the other side still standing, still talking about Him, still in a kind of holy, frozen awe that He holds it all together. And because of that, can confidently say, “I wouldn’t change a thing.”
In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. — Matthew 5:16
A mirror can only reflect what is held up to it. He held Himself up to me. Even this. Even me. My heart’s desire is to be a mirror of His light, His wisdom, and His love – for Him, not for me.
He is before all things. And in Him, all things hold together. May our hearts and our lives be the proof of that, every day.
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