I had the honor of sharing my testimony numerous times over the previous years. I shared all the broken parts and had tears in my eyes just about every time telling it. I told about how my family is broken, and how that left me broken. I told about broken relationships and broken hearts. I shared about broken things and people who I made feel broken.
I’ve been broken and I am still broken. Brokenness will always be apart of me, but the importance is being able to own my brokenness instead of hiding it. In the moment, there is no joy in being broken, but the Lord will use it.
The positive side of brokenness is that it brings healing. The healing then brings restoration, and restoration brings redemption. However, we can not begin to heal until we accept and own our brokenness. It is nothing to be ashamed of. We think that being honest about the hurt and the brokenness means we are a terrible Christian. As christians we think “how could anything be bad when we have Jesus?” But what is more beautiful than seeing God in the brokenness?
—-We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. —2 Cor. 4:7-10
The hardest thing I been through was watching the most treasured thing in my life fall apart. The one thing that was broken triggered my heart to break, my trust to break, and part of me to shut down. It took me years to realize the brokenness, and it STILL hurts to talk about it today. I learned a valuable lesson during the brokenness. That lesson is that YOU must make the choice to learn from your brokenness and grow.
When I started talking about my brokenness I started to see where the Lord was at through all of it. I started to see what He was teaching me. I started to understand and view the brokenness from a completely new perspective. Instead of holding on to the hurt, I chose to learn from it. I didn’t pray for the hurt to go away. Instead I prayed that the Lord would show me the purpose for it.
We’ve all been there, yet we only feel safe to admit something was wrong after we’ve actually got through it. We only share stories of pain and suffering if they have a happy ending. We will only admit to the hurt and disappointment if there is a ‘but’. ‘But God can use this experience for my betterment’. ‘But God is good’. ‘But God has a plan for me’. There is huge truth in all of those statements. In hindsight I can see how real those statements have been in my life. But only in hindsight. At the time I was so weighed down by the brokenness that I couldn’t see the Light.
I’m a woman broken by the Lord so that I can be healed. And I believe that I’m much better as a healed woman than I ever was before the breaking. I am not ashamed to say I am broken because I KNOW the Lord is going to use it not only to better me, but to equip me to walk along side other broken people and assure them that there is healing.
God is allowing the breaking, and If God allows it He is going to use it. If God allows it, He is going to bring good out of it. If God allows it, He is going to bring us through it. If God allows it, He is going to be glorified!
