Brokenness. It’s a scary word. The world even tells us to run away from brokenness. It’s counterintuitive to dig into brokenness because you might find more pain.
When brokenness hits, it’s easy to run away. It’s easy to pretend like everything is ok until you have somehow been made whole again. It’s easy to hold your story until you aren’t broken anymore. Or you can just fake it til you make it.
This isn’t a blog about once being broken and now being whole. It isn’t a blog about faking it. This isn’t that kind of blog at all.
Lately, I’ve been broken. Not like a “I need a small fix kind of broken” but like my life is spinning out of control and all I can feel is shattered pieces. I debated not writing this blog because I’m still broken, so broken with no light at the end of the tunnel yet. But sometimes we just need to share while we are still in the mess.
“Sometimes it is braver to share the messy middle, without the redemption, the lesson, the part where it all starts to make sense. Sometimes we just need to sit in that tension and feel the lack of resolution: that hunger for the world to be put right; for death and disease to be no more; for God to be near; for every tear to be wiped from our eyes. “ –Tanya Marlow
I AM broken. Right in the middle of it. God has taken me to some painfully deep places that have left me broken, and He has yet to heal me. My heart hurts. My life is chaotic. I’m tired—really tired. My stomach is in knots. I’m broken.
And now I’m faced with a decision on how to handle the brokenness. How am I going to respond? Am I going to run away to avoid the pain? Am I going to hide until I’m not broken anymore? Am I going to ignore it until I can tell a good story?
Or am I going to embrace it?
Embrace it knowing that there are foundational truths that will carry me through.
- This season of my life doesn’t change who God is.
- This brokenness doesn’t change His plan for my life.
- This circumstance doesn’t change His love for me.
- It doesn’t change His greatness and His strength.
- It doesn’t change Him at all.
I’ve experienced deep brokenness before. I’ve walked through many things. But God was always right there with me making himself known to me in my time of brokenness.
This brokenness seems so different. I don’t feel God close to me at all. I can’t see what the healing will look like. I’m in the middle of the mess and all I have right now is the mess without the redemption, without the lesson, and without the part where it all makes sense. I want to see God in this brokenness but I don’t. I want to know that these feelings will go away, but they remain. I want to know His presence, but it’s gone. But I also know that my feelings aren’t always truth. His truths — the foundational truths — are true.
And so in the midst of the brokenness, I worship. In the midst of the pain and the tears, I worship. Not because I feel like singing and dancing and lifting my hands to him in surrender. But I worship because it’s the only thing I know that will get me through this season. Worship is where the truths reveal themselves. The pieces WILL begin to be put back together. Restoration WILL happen. He will get bigger in my life and eventually things won’t be shattered anymore. Eventually things will be beautiful again. In the middle of the mess, the heart of the brokenness, I worship. And I embrace that I’m in the middle of the mess instead of hiding til it’s over because these circumstances don’t change who He is.
