I am Broken

I am the girl who, despite a difficult past, "had it together."  I said the right things, did the right things, tried so hard to be who I was supposed to be.  To be a good daughter.  A good Christian.  A good wife. The perfect mom.  Through my parents divorce, my father's suicide, unemployment, homelessness, spiritual abuse, hard deliveries, critically ill babies.

"How are you?"

"Okay." "Hanging in there." "Trusting God." "Waiting to see what the Lord has planned."

I love people, and I want them to love me.  I dared not be broken.  Goodness knows I'd heard enough from the church that nobody wants to be around needy people.  We talk about Christ redeeming us in our brokenness, but apparently, once saved, we dare not be broken again.  To be broken, desperate, in need, is to lack faith.

Or so I thought.  So went the implication of what I'd been taught. The church doesn't know what to do with you when you break. And when I did break, they let me know that it wasn't acceptable. 

What happens then when material "blessings" vanish?  When illness strikes?  When the church turns its back? When you realize that you thought you were raising your children as the Bible commanded, and then all of it turns on its head?

When you come to the very end of yourself?

You discover grace.  Mercy.  That the version of Christianity you'd been practicing your whole life was void of those things.  You realize that there is hope.  Hope for me, for my family, and for the church.

So here I am, working out my responses to hard things.  Rethinking everything you thought you knew is hard and humbling, but I'm determined not to be the girl who "has it all together" anymore.  I never was that girl.  Truly.  I was coming apart inside.  

By God's grace I am here.  And I pray that He might allow me to be a reflection of that grace, no matter how small.  To my family, my community, and the world.