Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Brokenness

 Emily speaks about the brokenness surrounded by beauty, and I feel it.  Her heavy heart and tearstained face come through the screen as if I was sitting next to her, watching her tears fall.  And this brokenness, this pain of life, it's here too.  I see it in my friend who keeps turning to new relationships, looking for peace and joy and instead finding new heartache.  It's in my family, in disappointments, horrible work situations, mental health issues and failing health.  Brokenness haunts us all, in so many different ways.  So we hate the pain, despise it, keep looking for the next best thing, for the thing that will fix us.  When it doesn't get fixed, when the pain continues, we get angry.  Disillusioned.  Hopeless.  Broken.  Or in my case, even more broken.

 I am memorizing Colossians piece by piece this year.  I'm behind by a week or two because I'm stuck on a verse. (My week of being mad at God may also have played a part in why I'm behind)  In Colossians 1v24, Paul says: Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions, for the sake of His body, which is the Church.

 This verse causes me to stumble.  Paul rejoices in his suffering? He keeps looking for more suffering for the sake of the Church?  Was he nuts?  I mediate, walk away and come back, all the while with these themes of beauty and suffering running through my head.  As I mix together the ingredients for dinner, sweep flour off the floor and calm the screaming child, my heart continues to churn.  Why suffering? Why should we feel pain so deeply?

 Last Thursday, I had a meltdown.  In tears, I screamed at my husband that I wished I could remove my emotions, cut them out.  I wanted drugs that would shut down my feelings, numb me, so I could be an automaton performing my task perfectly without any extra emotion.  I feel too broken to be worth something, as if my pain hinders me from being valuable.  I cry over and over again that I didn't ask to be broken.

 Much later I realized that it is because of my brokenness that I seek God.  When things get hard, I cry out.  Sometimes, I shut down, shut God out and walk away.  But more often, it is in these hard times that I grow closer to God, that I am refined.  Without such deep pain in my life, I might not seek God.  This answer seems too simple for such deep questions and hurt.  I know that there are many reasons for pain, sin being chief among them.   But I am comforted for the moment with the knowledge that pain sparks change, primarily in my relationship with God.

Celebrating the broken redeemed


16 comments:

  1. My best growth came from my worst times. But I had to be open to God to show me what good could come out of it.
    My fibromyalgia has made my life continually tough, but I'm a more sensitive and compassionate person because of it.
    I have had meltdowns. I've learned the hard way to acknowledge them, pray, and resolve to move on.
    I too have been reading scriptures such as yours. It seems a bit crazy, yet look at all the good Paul did---I'm sure his attitude had a lot to do with his success in his ministry for Christ. I have to work on attitude a lot, but not as much as when I was your age. But I wasn't as open to God at your age as you are. It's a blessing that you are.
    Remember there is a difference between conviction and condemnation. Don't put condemnation on yourself.

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  2. We do tend to search for Him in our brokenness. Praying you feel His love today. I enjoyed reading your heart!

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  3. grace, are you in my head sometimes? i feel as tho i know my version of these questions, these tantrums, these impossible emotions. often i run away from him b/cs i'm mad at being broken (yes, even made at being a fragile jar/unvasefragile) and yet i am also reminded in better times how exactly that brokenness spells out G R A C E to me in the grind, in the scarring/healing. so just know i'm nodding yes at these words, hear the hope and the hands turned upward.

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  4. I'm in awe of you sharing so openly; thanks. I sure wish there were a way to avoid this kind of pain!

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  5. Oh wow - I am blessed by your transparency here. That last paragraph is so true.

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  6. pain sparks change--yes. i need to be better about letting it drive me to God's throne. sometimes i let it stick me knee-deep in disillusionment--but i want to be changed. i know that.

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  7. Being mad at God – that can slow things down – interesting how 2,000 years ago Paul wrote those words for you to find, how the timing was so good. Probably just coincidence. (◠‿◠) Probably not .

    And I heart this, “pain sparks change, primarily in my relationship with God.” Amen.
    {smile}

    God Bless you and keep you and your family

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  8. When we are weak, He is strong. I just need to remember this more often.

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  9. Being mad at God, oh how I know this. This has been such a strong response to the most recently broken parts of my life that God asked me to lay that anger at Him down for Lent. Learn to reach out, to relate to Him differently, without the crutch of my anger.

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  10. He knows our pain, our anger, and loves us through it. Yes.

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  11. it's only much later that i tend to see suffering as a gift. in the middle of it, the whole thing feels suffocating.

    i'm praying that you will KNOW His presence beside you in the furnace. you have beautiful perspective, grace.

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  12. bless you! this was great writing...i know what you mean about wanting the emotions to go away. i am an emotional person also, and they sometimes get the best of me too.

    But I am comforted for the moment with the knowledge that pain sparks change, primarily in my relationship with God. - so true! God wants you to give him all of your junk, so that he can give you all of his wonderfullness - it's a great trade, i do it all the time :)

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  13. Pain sparks change...that is one of the reasons I can bear it...to be changed.

    Sometimes we emotional types just need to cry until we are done, and be okay with it.

    Blessings to you!

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  14. i have lived this. in some ways i still am...i am beginning to see my way out of the desert though i am still unsure what the promised land looks like...i see glimmers...

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  15. oh grace... sometimes i long for those drugs too, friend. to cut out those feelings. it's too much, i cry. but then i realize, the bible says Jesus was a man of sorrows... we can only know him through his suffering. this, in the end, is the only real way to believe. to long for heaven, and all of its healing and glory. love you.

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  16. "pain sparks change". yes. i should write that down somewhere, so i will remember. because change is what my soul wants, what my spirit needs.

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