Both the Worst Days and the Best Days

Something that was shared in conference this past weekend has stayed with me in a way I did not expect.

You know how sometimes a sentence just lingers.

You hear it once, and then it keeps coming back to you in quiet moments. While you are driving. While you are doing dishes. When you are laying in bed replaying parts of your life.

This was one of those sentences for me.

Emily Belle Freeman said,

“Maybe it took both the worst days and the best days for Peter to become who he needed to become.”

I cannot stop thinking about that.

Because when we talk about Peter, we usually remember the beautiful moments.

The courageous ones.

The stories that feel inspiring and full of faith.

But Peter’s life was not just filled with miracles.

There were the other days too.

The humiliating ones.

The ones where he failed in front of everyone.

The ones where he probably replayed his mistakes over and over in his mind.

The ones where shame must have crept in and whispered, You blew it.

Peter walked on water… and Peter sank.

Peter testified boldly that Jesus was the Christ… and later denied even knowing Him.

Can you imagine that moment?

Looking back and realizing you had just denied the very Savior you loved.

That kind of regret stays with a person.

Both the worst days and the best days.

And somehow the Lord used all of it.

I think that is the part that gives me so much hope.

Because if I am honest...some of the moments that have shaped me the most were not the beautiful ones.

They were the painful ones.

The seasons where people misunderstood me.

The moments when criticism hit harder than I expected.

When emails or messages came in that questioned my intentions or my faith or the work I felt God had asked me to do.

Those moments can shake you.

They make you wonder if you should just step back.

Be quieter.

Stop putting yourself out there.

I have had nights where I laid in bed replaying conversations in my mind, wishing I had said something differently. Wondering if I had somehow missed what God was asking of me.

Those are the moments that feel like opposition.

The ones where doubt creeps in quietly.

But when I look back at those seasons now, I can see something I could not see in the middle of them.

God was doing something inside of me.

He was strengthening places in my heart that were still fragile.

Teaching me to rely more on Him than on the approval of people.

Helping me learn that my worth was never tied to whether everyone understood me.

I think sometimes we imagine God’s provision as protection from the hard parts of life.

But more often, His provision looks like strength while we are walking through them.

It looks like quiet reassurance when you feel misunderstood.

It looks like courage when you feel tempted to shrink back.

It looks like peace slowly replacing the shame or fear you carried.

And maybe those moments, the ones we wish had never happened, are not wasted after all.

Maybe they are part of the becoming.

Maybe the criticism shapes humility.

Maybe the discouragement deepens faith.

Maybe the seasons that break our hearts open are the same ones that make room for God to build something stronger inside of us.

Because if Peter needed both the worst days and the best days to become who he needed to become…

I think maybe we do too.