Brokenness is a road inhabited by many – but only a few seem to find healing.
We live in a broken world and during some of our worst times or challenging circumstances, we truly feel the full magnitude of the “brokenness” that this life has to offer. We’ve all gone through things that have played a part in the people we became, for better or for worse. We can easily speak to the great things that have shaped us, yet, we hide the bad we’ve endured and bad things that are possibly plaguing us, due to shame, sadness, or those things we went through being too painful to reminisce about. Our brokenness gone unchecked can be detrimental to our future and most importantly ourselves, due to its endless potential in distorting our view and experience in this life. What must we do to remedy our brokenness? What can we do? Seek God, right?
(James 4:8 ESV) explains, “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.”
We tend to at times hide our brokenness from the world out of shame, feeling less than, being made fun of, feeling inadequate, and other reasons. We may, in the process, unknowingly hide it from our all-knowing God as well at times, creating a distance between ourselves and God. Tony Evans has a great quote: “People wonder why they have so little of God when God has so little of them.” We typically run toward, rely on and become so accustomed to our worldly problem solvers: therapy, doctors, friends and family, social media, or ourselves (Proverbs 3:5-6). We seek healing and restoration from so many things other than God. This is possibly due to us assuming we need to be perfect for God to inhabit us and our circumstances, or maybe believing God can’t truly fathom what we may be enduring. This line of thinking neglects the fact that God was represented in the flesh through Christ and is someone who understands what we may be or will go through more than anyone else possibly could (John 1:14).
Have you ever hidden or have you been hiding your real self from God? Is there an invisible wall between you two? Are you willing to be your authentic self with God and show Him just how broken you truly are in hopes of Him healing and restoring you?
I believe some of us may have experienced and are left with this uneasiness and emptiness. Because if we can’t be our real selves with God, then who else can we be our true unapologetically real selves with, whatever state that may be?
Our brokenness from whatever may have happened or be happening to us can have us living in two different worlds simultaneously. Our minds and spirit may be inhabiting a world where we are just depleted and feel defeated continually. While our physical bodies are inhabiting a world where it doesn’t stop because we’re hurt or dismayed, it just continues on with whatever state we may be in, day in and day out. What can we do? Who can we go to? All we have is God.
A few years ago, when I gave my life to Christ, I had just gone through the worst breakup of my life, I attempted suicide, I closed my whole being off from the world emotionally, and I had a psychotic break, frankly. My mother’s husband had just died and I shut off my attempts to heal from my issues to attend to my mother in her time of need. You can say I was in a broken state truly. And I remember just lying to God, not wanting to be bothered with Him, because I had fallen into thinking things like “What type of good God could allow these things in one of His follower’s lives?” or “God couldn’t be in this”, or understand what I was going through. I didn’t understand how to be a Christian, I truly didn’t know if I had made the right choice at the time giving up the world, something I was familiar with for twenty-two years, for God, something I couldn’t see or hadn’t made personal in my heart yet.
On New Year’s Eve, my church always had this prayer to welcome us into the new year with the last remaining few hours of the year. I remember in those last hours of that crazy year, I wept and showed all of my hurt, fear, pain, and brokenness that I hid from God and the world. I literally couldn’t hold it anymore or carry on with the facade that I had created to just endure my daily life. For the first time, I was truly real with God and God was real with me. Through all my words and just letting God know what I felt and was going through, God gave me a peace that I couldn’t fathom or understand (Philippians 4:7). My brokenness and circumstances may have not been healed or changed at that moment. But by God’s glory, I wasn’t the same. Isaiah 61:3 reminds us “To all who mourn in Israel, he will give a crown of beauty for ashes, a joyous blessing instead of mourning, festive praise instead of despair. In their righteousness, they will be like great oaks that the LORD has planted for his own glory.”
If you all get nothing from these words, my hope is that you realize our brokenness isn’t a disqualifier for God. If anything it should be an invitation for Him because the world’s remedies are only a band-aid for what we all may go through, whatever that may be. Also, “we are no good to anyone, if ‘we’ aren’t good.” If anyone could handle our brokenness, it’s God.
