My seven-year-old carefully carried her treasure home in a simple paper bag, wrapped at the store with ribbon and dried sage. She’d found a fairy, a tiny doll with white lacy wings and a halo of silver tinsel. It was cheap, but to her it was priceless.
She played with it for a few days then set it down in the wrong place.
When she was gone one morning, her sister brought me the treasured fairy doll in two pieces. In her three-year-old clumsiness, she’d broken off one of the hands.
I subtly hid the broken fairy before I could get to the store for super glue.
Gluing it back on I realized it didn’t sit the right way on the tiny arm. The resin had cracked in an obvious bracelet around her wrist. Hope would know immediately that the hand had broken off. And before I would explain, she would understand exactly who the culprit was.
To a seven-year-old, brokenness, even in the face of repair, somehow signifies worthlessness. Who knows if the hand won’t just fall off again because the glue isn’t strong enough? Or the slightest touch in the right place might send it sailing to the carpet. And plus, it just looks bad, Mama…
It just looks bad. She’s right.
Brokenness does look bad. And in the case of fairy hands, brokenness IS bad too.
But with the human heart considered, brokenness is better than the strong, firm hold of something that hasn’t been crushed and bruised at the feet of an Almighty God.
And this is the irony of Christianity.
What is weak is strong.
What is last is first.
What is broken is whole.
She will continue to play games with her dismembered fairy, and after a few days, that hand might find a home in the back of the junk drawer. And Hope might wish she had a doll with a matching set of arms. And she’s right, broken toys are no fun.
However, hearts are a different matter altogether.
At the height of our healing process, Chad said to me, “You can’t help but love a broken heart.” We are drawn with compassion toward brokenness and humility almost without being able to stop.
And I believe God always draws close to the broken.
Broken is scary and sometimes ugly, but it is at this place that God meets us.
Tags: brokenness, Christianity, irony, strength
i’m concerned some people will never get it…
As I walk this land with broken dreams
I have visions of many things
Love’s happiness is just an illusion
Filled with sadness and confusion,
What becomes of the broken hearted
Who had love that’s now departed?
I know I’ve got to find
Some kind of peace of mind
Maybe.
The fruits of love grow all around
But for me they come a tumblin’ down.
Every day heartaches grow a little stronger
I can’t stand this pain much longer
I walk in shadows
Searching for light
Cold and alone
No comfort in sight,
Hoping and praying for someone to care
Always moving and goin to where?
What becomes of the broken hearted
Who had love that’s now departed?
I know I’ve got to find
Some kind of peace of mind
Maybe.
I’m searching though I don’t succeed,
But someone look, there’s a growing need.
Oh, he is lost, there’s no place for beginning,
All that’s left is an unhappy ending.
Now what’s become of the broken-hearted
Who had love that’s now departed?
I know I’ve got to find
Some kind of peace of mind
I’ll be searching everywhere
Just to find someone to care.
I’ll be looking everyday
I know I’m gonna find a way
Nothings gonna stop me now
I’ll find a way somehow
I’ll be searching everywhere
You don’t START looking for True Love ‘out there’.
You begin the search for True Love ‘in here’. That is where He will meet you.
There is only One who can be ever True, who has the power to mend a broken heart. To give what the heart truly desires.
♥
<B
It’s like that Derek Webb song “I Want a Broken Heart”… so true!
I love that idea that brokeness is beautiful. It really hit me why God is so often not concerned how we look to the world. He’s not concerned with the outward appearance of righteousness…He’s interested in our hearts, in our broken hearts before Him. Thanks for helping me see that!
This is so beautiful.
Thank you for being transparent, for being real, for sharing your brokenness, and God’s unending Grace. Thank you.
That’s beautiful. So true and I’d never thought of it before. Thank you!
Thanks for this. I am going through the process of brokenness now and it truly feels like a lonley place.
Many of my Christian friends do not understand and tell me I need to read my Bible more and pray more, or ask if I have repented lately.
Thank you for sharing.
Thanks for sharing this. Beautiful! I love reading your blog!
AMEN!
This is wonderful. I love the perspective. Thanks!
“Who knows if the hand won’t just fall off again because the glue isn’t strong enough?” ….that phrase punched me in the gut this morning b/c that is how I too often view the redeeming work God has done in my marriage. I lug around this weight of worry cheapening the restoring work of my God. How foolish of me to compare my Jesus’s gruesome death on the cross to a squeeze from a $1.50 tube of super glue.
Thank you for a beautiful analogy of brokenness.
May we daily live in the fullness of God’s grace.
What a beautiful post – love it!
Beautiful.
so true!
Amen. Amen.
I do not know you, but God has chosen you to speak directly to my heart and He is telling me I am, indeed, broken. I have been in denial, not wanting to be broken. All the while feeling scared & ugly, running away from God, going from one reason to another for my state of being. Even with this realization, I still do not want to be broken, I am ANGRY. I do not want to be broken, I want to be whole. However I am starting to see that maybe it’s okay to be broken and the only thing I need to do is GO to HIM. AND HE WILL MAKE ME WHOLE. You have facilitated this new line of thinking.
I imagine the road will still be hard because I still struggle with wanting to be whole on my own, I suppose that is pride, I know it is, but it is so hard to lay it down, to lay it down at His feet.
I have no idea why I have shared all of this, I set out to only thank you & tell you God is using you, and at least for me, in a mighty way.
Thank you.
And I am so grateful that He is drawn to brokenness.
Oly,
Let Him break you in half. There is no better surgeon in the universe that can “cut” you, operate on you and put you back together BETTER than when you started than Christ Himself.
Let it go and let Him work.
Praying for you
ahhhh… to be sweetly broken is the only way to be whole!
i too have been wrecked by God and would have it no other way. I join my voice with yours to invite people to that place of brokenness. I don’t even know if is possible to humble yourself… maybe for some people (but obviously not for me!)
if you can… do it with all your might
if you can’t… ask Him to… and he will (even if you don’t mean it, which i didn’t when i asked Him to, but He still did)
let Jesus mess you up, just give in to Him, stop resisting; then look out!
God bless you guys for letting your lives be open and vulnerable! He is obviously using you with amazing power!
There’s a Jason Gray song that goes like this:
http://www.newreleasetuesday.com/lyricsdetail.php?lyrics_id=37787
That whole album (all the lovely losers) is worth every single penny – but this song especially, speaks to what you’re saying here. The cut makes us whole.
beautifully said my friend.
makes me think of this chorus:
At the cross You beckon me
You draw me gently to my knees, and I am
Lost for words, so lost in love,
I’m sweetly broken, wholly surrendered
we just sang a worship song at church this week with the lyrics “break my heart God for what breaks yours” and I keep singing it all week. It is so easy to accept the mask that the world lets me wear and even praises me for wearing it, but I want the brokenness that keeps me at His feet, even when it hurts!
Sarah, This is another beautifully, poignant post…
Brokenness is His invitation to healing. He knew we were broken… He’s not surprised… He comes to the broken. “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach good news. I have come to heal the broken hearted and bind up their wounds. Isaiah 61.
He comes to fix broken people… He’s drawn to us… in our brokenness. He gathers us up, holds us close and tenderly tells us how deeply we are loved. Just as a mother comforting their small child who has fallen down and gotten a boo-boo… so He comforts us… Yet it is a deep comfort unlike anything we’ve ever experienced before.
Loved this! Love your heart!!
Such truth!
Wow. Amazingly simple yet true!
I can’t seem to get enough of your blog today. I was directed here through Crystal Renaud and DirtyGirl Ministries.
I like to think of it like this, and this metaphor has a particularly powerful meaning to me, we are broken in order that the glue of the Blood of Jesus Christ can put us back together again.
I was 7 or 8 years old when we had my paternal grandparents over. We brought out the finest china, the china that had been my grandmother’s and was now my dad’s. It was china that did not go in the dishwasher so afterwards my sisters and I were left to wash them by hand. I was drying and my clumsy hands dropped a cup and broke it into a thousand pieces. My dad grabbed me and pulled me to my second story bedroom, pointed to the window, and said, “If you do that again I will push you out.” The damage had been done. My heart and self-worth lay on that kitchen floor with the broken pieces of the cup. It wouldn’t be until many years later that I realized how devastating that broken cup was for me. My dad and I have experience miraculous restoration and healing. I still struggle with my self-worth as there have been many moments in my 32 year old life that told me I was worthless. But amazing Love, how can it be! It is Jesus’ blood that makes me whole.
I read once, and I forget where, “A heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe.”
i love the hair,.yes
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