I am broken...and He's beautiful
These last few weeks have been weeks where much has been broken in the world. This is a post I wrote a couple of months ago, but now is the time to share it as we seek to find God in the midst of our brokenness...
Every time I have stopped in the last week a wave of grief has hit me. I recognize it because it is how I felt after I lost children. It is an ache and a brokenness within. But it isn’t a depression. It isn’t a despair. It doesn’t grip hold of me or hold me down - it is actually a thing of beauty.
After I lost baby Solomon at 16 weeks pregnant I never felt despair. I didn’t even feel ‘sad’ much of the time. Of course I had moments when I broke down and cried, of course there were times I missed him and thought of him. I did feel grief. I felt wave after wave of brokenness and weakness and knowing it was only God who was holding me together. It was one step at a time and often it was no steps at a time as life just stopped still and I allowed life to move around me.
This week I feel that brokenness. At times it feels like time itself stops still and I am nothing in a universe of God’s Awesomeness. I reach out and try and grab at it and make sense of it and I can’t. Instead the waves bring surprising memories of good times past which no longer are but could be again. They are invitations to pray and hope and say ‘yes’ in the Spirit until they become reality here on earth.
They remind me of God’s faithfulness in times of loneliness and despair. They remind me of God’s powerful Presence and how much I long, long, long for more of it. They remind me of make-up hugs and moments of breakthrough mixed with relief. It is the weakness of fasting, of exhaustion and of humility. It is the coming to the end of myself and losing myself but coming face to face with Him.
And everywhere I look there is the theme of brokenness - in conversations, in Facebook posts, in the books I am reading.
Could God possibly desire brokenness above seeming fixed-ness?
Could God possibly prefer me broken and weak and at the end of me over held-together-all-by-myself me, because that is where He is?
I must become less so that He can become more?
If we are broken people, let’s embrace that reality - embrace Him - rather than mask it, hide it, pride it, perfect it.
The way of the cross is not a preferred topic of conversation. No one likes the suggestion of picking up our cross. We do it begrudgingly and under obligation. We shout our martyrdom from the roof tops on social media and in conversations over coffee.
But what if we didn’t face the cross kicking and screaming? What if we saw the cross before us and walked confidently yet humbly towards it? What if we embraced our weaknesses and our protests and laid them down before Him in trust. Wouldn’t that be beautiful? Wouldn’t that be true righteousness (right relationship with Him): trusting our Saviour who went before us, who knows and who suffered and who chooses so often not to rescue us out of our suffering but instead meet us in it?
Lord, if You are there in that place of brokenness, I embrace it, knowing You are the only one who can make me whole again.
“Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me… The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise”
“A Message from the high and towering God,
who lives in Eternity,
whose name is Holy:
“I live in the high and holy places,
but also with the low-spirited, the spirit-crushed,
And what I do is put new spirit in them””
