Near the beginning of the race I met a couple who was doing missions work in Ecuador. My team and I spent a night with them in their house watching football, eating chocolate that was way overpriced, and just talking. It was a sweet time filled with laughter and small tastes of home. At one point during the evening the wife looked down at my phone and realized that there was a crack in it. She laughed to herself and said “you can always tell a racers phone from others by the screens”. They had seen a few teams pass through and obviously picked up on the fact that phone safety is not always a reality when backpacking long term. Now this was a small crack and nothing I really thought much of. It was a bit annoying at times but never anything that I couldn’t look around.
Fast forward 5 months. I am currently in Singapore. This morning I was hanging up my towel after showering and as I released my towel from my hand my phone also fell out of my hand. Thinking nothing if it (as dropping my phone is a frequent occurrence) I flipped it over and was suddenly stopped in my tracks. A screen that at one time had one small crack had been dropped one to many times. It now sat shattered into thousands of tiny pieces.
As the last few hours have passed I have become frustrated, upset, and tried so hard to talk myself into the fact that it is just a phone and it’s not a big deal. I shouldn’t be materialistic and make it a big deal. As I dwelled and processed what to do further the Lord spoke to me. He showed me that the shattering was all under the surface. My screen protector was holding the majority of my phone together. It was keeping all that brokenness in place. Although the edges are chipping away and cause jagged sharp edges there is a greater force keeping the rest together.
That crack that started 5 months ago was small and it could be ignored. Much like some of the brokenness that God was revealing in my life. It started out small. We were taking baby steps towards bigger things, but I was fast to ignore them and act like they just weren’t there. Telling myself I could work on them at a later time. But as life continues I had hard days, drop the phone once, I would slip back into a pattern of sin, drop the phone again, I would allow words from others and lies from the devil to effect me, another drop of the phone, I would speak harshly about the way I look or act, the phone hits the floor again. I’m sure you get the idea. All these little things that are working against me. All the ways I am giving Satan a foothold in my life. Each one working to deepen and spread that crack a little further.
But remember I have this screen protector on my phone. Luckily it is keeping the pieces in place. This is the grace, mercy, forgiveness, and love of my Heavenly Father. He is here holding me together. Allowing me to be broken and hurt, harsh edges and all. He is sustaining me with his incredible love. But the brokenness is still there. Someone has to fix it. Someone has to peal back the screen protector, remove the brokenness, and replace it with a new and perfect screen. I must let God come in and take my brokenness, I must be willing to let myself be open and reveal the true prices of my heart for him to really be able to come in and heal them. Only he can come into this brokenness and restore me as whole and even more beautiful them before.
