There’s something really wrong with my life. Something really, truly wrong, something that has messed up the deepest part of my soul. Or at least it seems that way.
It all started about two months ago. Two months ago, my then girlfriend, a girl who I thought was “the one,” broke up with me. Of course I was devastated. Of course I was heartbroken. Of course there was pain. So of course I went to God, asking him to heal me. He did. Really, he did, at least until I stopped looking to him for help, when I decided that I would be ok on my own.
It worked for a while, trying to heal myself.
Life was really good; I even thought I had moved on. But then things changed. I don’t know exactly what changed, or how, or why, but something changed, and I came face to face with the reality of my situation. Despite my best efforts, there is still a huge hole in my life that used to be filled with my ex. There is still hurt and pain and questioning and anger and all those emotions that come from a breakup. There is still brokenness and these have been some of the most painful times I can immediately recall.
Yet in the midst of all this, there has been comfort from a very unlikely place.
A few days ago I was asking God to take the pain and the emptiness away and to just heal me. He didn’t. In fact, he reminded me of what he told Paul when Paul was in a similar situation. He said “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” It was as if he was saying that this brokenness is exactly where he wants me, so that he will be made known to, and through, me.
The point is, there’s beauty in our brokenness. There’s God in our emptiness. Without that brokenness, without that emptiness, we tend to forget that we need God in the day to day. All God wants is for us to seek him and sometimes all that keeps us seeking God is the realization that we need him; only in our times of deepest need do we come to that realization.
And that’s why we often find ourselves to be empty, why seasons of brokenness last longer than we want. In those seasons come the yearning to know God; without that drive, we would never really spend time getting to know him, getting to know his touch. Sometimes, we have to come to the realization that we truly do live in a state of brokenness, not because of God’s will, but more because of our sin. But there’s still beauty in that, not because of our sin, but because of our need for God. Without him, we are truly empty, broken people in desperate need of a loving Savior.
There’s another thing about brokenness; it truly is a great mystery. Think about a few pieces of gold. In order to fashion gold into jewelry, a jeweler has to melt down the gold; he has to break it. He must take the gold apart in order to make it whole again. Yet after this long, somewhat destructive process, he ends up with a great and beautiful work fit for the heads of kings.
Is it not the same with us? When we are broken, God fixes us just like he always does. Sure, the process is often long and can be painful, but in the end, we come out so much better: We come out as a great and beautiful work fit for the head of a King.
