brokenness

Earlier in the semester, I wrote a short piece about brokenness and the dialogue between God and I about it. So here it is!

Broken, wounded, and complicated have always been words that I associate with helplessness, uselessness, and just a negative connotation all around. It doesn’t feel like butterflies and rainbows when I’m titled with these words, more like a gut-wrenching pain that wants to deny it, but deep down knows how true those words are. Every once in a while the wounds and pain will grab hold and seem to wring out my heart making it known that my heart is littered with holes. Most of the time I do everything in my power to keep that brokenness buried and unexposed because if I don’t admit that it’s there, it will just go away and disappear right? Is there really a need to bring it out in the open and have the hurt smash you in the face like a cinderblock? Isn’t it better just to leave it alone, push it as far down as I can, and keep trucking on?

“But I care too much to not make you whole. I care too much to let you ignore it and have it linger with you.”

As much as I don’t want to process and surface wounds and brokenness, I find some kind of comfort in the fact that God does it for my good and that His purposes are based on His unimaginable care for me. As much as I don’t want Him to reach into my heart, yank out the wounds and pain, and lay them out on the table for me and the whole world to see, I know that His painful healing process is by far much better than if I were to ignore the rips in my heart and continue to keep it suppressed. His healing process is such a tender and careful process and He knows very well exactly how every hole in my heart got there and its condition ever since. He knows exactly what hole needs filling when and how. He even sees and cares about the holes I don’t even realize are there because I’ve suppressed them so much. Many times I don’t know I have certain wounds until He fills and heals them.

These wounds were the hidden things of my heart, the things that the outside world didn’t see and I hoped never would see because the world can’t know that I have struggles and aches. All I wanted to the world to see was composure on the outside, the reputation that I “have everything together.” This is partially why it’s such a terrifying thing to have my deepest wounds and scars exposed; however, it’s also extremely difficult to face it personally all over again. It’s as if I’m re-living what I’ve been trying to blot out for so long. I had once thought I had escaped it once and for all by burying and ignoring it. I had once thought I had control over all of it. I had once felt on top of the world because I felt like I had achieved something in burying it all, like I myself had defeated it. This sense of my own prideful achievement is always shot down the moment God reminds me of the gaping holes in my heart, when He reminds me that something isn’t right. Many times I have cried out:

Why, my God, why has the hidden hurt resurfaced? I was doing just fine before, why is my heart broken all over again?

 But oh so gently does my God answer:

“My own heart is broken beyond your understanding; it hurts me to see you hurt. You can’t do this on your own for only I know your heart’s true condition and needs. Let me heal what only I can heal. Let me fill what only I can fill. Now is the time for this to be taken care of.”

What a realization it is to see that there’s nothing I can do to truly heal myself. Only my God can be the true Jehovah-Rapha, The Lord Who Heals. Who am I to think that I know what’s best for my heart that is not my own? And I rest in the fact that I don’t have to put on a front for the rest of the world. I don’t have to have the appearance that I’m perfect and that life is skipping through daisies because, quite frankly, we’re not called to live a peaceful-sailing life. Jesus Himself said that there would be struggles and suffering, but to have courage. The saying goes: “Jesus doesn’t promise a smooth sailing, only a safe landing.” All I have to do is let God do His own healing in His own time. I don’t have to live under the pressure of hiding brokenness and when the temptation arises to believe that I am useless as a broken being, God whispers to my soul:

“I use broken things. I don’t use perfect things. It’s in broken things that My power is seen. ”

What a great God I have that would use the world’s broken, hurting, and wounded to shine His light to a broken, wounded, and hurting world, that He would use the world’s rejected to build His kingdom.