It’s been about a year or so since I tweeted this. Oddly it has been my most liked tweet. Perhaps there are allot of you who are experiencing your own brokenness.

Nothing has changed in my life since tweeting this. Life is still broken for me and God is still Mighty through these very difficult times.

I’ve had lots of time to think about brokenness and what it means on a grander scale. I’m still shy of fully embracing it.

What does it mean to embrace the brokenness?

Embracing something requires that you pull it in close and hug it to your heart as something to be treasured.

How is that possible when it hurts so much?

We hear so often that life changes on a dime and so well have I experienced this and perhaps you have as well.

The broken places can be a multitude of different things. Loss of your health, loss of your possessions, loss of loved ones. So how do we get to a place that we embrace these broken places.

We are often counseled to take it in stride, don’t look at it as loss or maybe just praise your way out of it.

Is this really the right counsel?

How can you take things that are so painful it cracks your heart in a million tiny pieces and just act like they don’t exist and it doesn’t hurt?

I’m going to tell you straight up that you can’t. It is not humanly possible. Only God can help you through it.

I’ve walked through some very difficult and pressing moments. I’ve lost a lot of things along the way. I’ve lost a lot of people as well.

These are very hard things to deal with and I’ve cried often.

Am I so shallow that I grieve over things or people? No life is not measured by the amount of our material worth or length of our friend list.

I grieve over things I have no control over.

Maybe this is my mountain to climb, my valley to walk through. The lack of control over my life is my broken place. I don’t like it when life feels out of sorts. I don’t like it when I have no say about it.

It’s hard giving utter control to God who works in all and through all.

Brokenness seems to be my Achilles heel. It has brought me to my knees in desperation. My faith shaking, my knees knocking, my heart pounding to the beat of a drum I’ve never heard before.

Even when I want to throw my hands skyward and scream uncle, that still small voice whispers “Embrace the Brokenness”

How is this even possible?

Verses screaming through my heart:

• Rejoice in the Lord alway and again I say rejoice.

• In my weakness His strength is made perfect.
• Let not your heart be troubled

Those are just a few.

In despair I have fallen to my knees crying for relief and yet I hear it once more.

“Embrace the Brokenness“

Embrace the loss, the pain and the sorrow as if it were a treasure. A gift to be cherished not discarded like a broken toy.

Brokenness has a way of showing who you are, what you are in the moments that matter most. It doesn’t define your character or your faith. It reveals it.

Embracing the things in your life that cannot be fixed by human intervention shows courage beyond your failed strength and faith beyond your ability to see.

Embracing your brokenness does not weaken you it reveals your weakness. It tells you where you stand in your ability and belief of God who cannot be shaken.

It proves how you handle the storms of life while Jesus rest contented in sleep in the boat tossing to and fro.

All I can say is God is good and He’s always faithful. He never leaves nor forsakes me.

Have I embraced this broken place yet?

Not fully but then He’s not done with me. My journey here is temporary but His love endures forever.

He takes the things I can’t handle and let’s me cry about it and mourn over it with that perfect patience that only He has.

I can’t tell you how relieved I am to know that He is so gentle and so very kind.

If you’re like me and don’t understand your broken places yet, just don’t give up. Someday it will make sense. We have to trust that this is good.

One thing I do know with absolute certainty is that God loves us more than we could ever imagine. He’s here in the broken places with us.

In the end I will embrace fully this broken place because it leads me somewhere that only He knows and I’m okay with that.

I won’t deny His love for me because I don’t understand the fullness of the trial I’m in.

When I think about Jesus in the garden I feel an awe in my heart because He fully embraced brokenness that day.

I see Him there sweating as it were great drops of blood and realize it was for me He did so.

It makes this brokenness pale in comparison.

I realize that if Christ can go through all that for me surely I can take a broken place or two.

That is my hope, that is my assurance that I can walk through this deep valley and hike up this incredibly hard mountain and be okay at the end of it all.

For now I will keep doing my best to embrace the broken places of my life. Yes, I’ll probably still cry allot. Yes, I’ll probably still have moments of despair.

I will not let go of the fact that He’s mighty through it all. I will hold tenaciously to the hope that this journey is for His Glory. I will cling desperately to the hand that will never let me go.

No I won’t be fooled into saying it doesn’t hurt or that I can just praise my way out of it. I won’t pretend that I’m super human and can’t be moved by trials. I don’t believe He expects that of me.

His word tells us He knows our frame and remembers that we are just dust.

I just won’t stop believing that He is working all things together for my good no matter how broken my places may be.

At the end of the journey I know it will be worth it all.

So for now…

As I pray all I hear God say is “Embrace the Brokenness” such hard times but such a Mighty God!

I’m hid with Christ,

Shawn

Jesus is indeed the best thing even in the Broken places!