Comfortable brokenness...
I used to have this wall hanging basket that had two ceramic rabbits in them that my mom gave to me and I have dropped that thing with those rabbits about 1000 times and keep gluing them back together. You can still make out their mangled shape is but uneven cracks and dried glue are all over them.
Have you ever kept something to the point of ridiculousness? Just kept it because it has always been around and it doesn't feel right to get rid of it? I discovered this week I have been doing that with brokenness in my life. Let me explain...…
My life, as I am sure most peoples has, has not worked the way it was supposed to. I grew up in a nice Christian home that stressed values of going to church and all of the warm fuzzies that come with that. Things were coasting along just fine. Then, in between the ages 17 and 20 a close family member attempted suicide and my parents got divorced after 23 years of marriage. Until then it never occurred to me that really bad things like that happened to Christians. God was supposed to keep that from happening, right?
I bounced back okay from these tragedies on my own and in the process of recovery determined that life did not fit into the nice neat box that God intended. It therefore also made perfect sense to me that going to church and hanging around those people that still believed in the "box" was a waste of time. After a while, I became really proud of my new approach to faith. I was so enlightened and the church going crowd was blind the realities of life.
That belief has stuck with me that until this week. I was talking to a co-worker and remarked that I was glad that most of the people that work at Women of Faith have had life give them a kick or two along the way because it makes us real. She said that it helps, but that it didn't have to be that way.
At that point I felt like those rabbits, broken, flawed, and hanging on my cracks for dear life. Even to the point of wearing them like a badge of honor. That counts as ridiculousness.
I realized through the words of my co-worker that God wants to spoil us with whole lives without cracks and tragedy and by hanging on with pride to our flaws we can keep him from spoiling us.
Needless to say I am in the process of getting rid of those personal cracks. As for the rabbits? I got rid of them too. Sorry mom. :)
Have you ever kept something to the point of ridiculousness? Just kept it because it has always been around and it doesn't feel right to get rid of it? I discovered this week I have been doing that with brokenness in my life. Let me explain...…
My life, as I am sure most peoples has, has not worked the way it was supposed to. I grew up in a nice Christian home that stressed values of going to church and all of the warm fuzzies that come with that. Things were coasting along just fine. Then, in between the ages 17 and 20 a close family member attempted suicide and my parents got divorced after 23 years of marriage. Until then it never occurred to me that really bad things like that happened to Christians. God was supposed to keep that from happening, right?
I bounced back okay from these tragedies on my own and in the process of recovery determined that life did not fit into the nice neat box that God intended. It therefore also made perfect sense to me that going to church and hanging around those people that still believed in the "box" was a waste of time. After a while, I became really proud of my new approach to faith. I was so enlightened and the church going crowd was blind the realities of life.
That belief has stuck with me that until this week. I was talking to a co-worker and remarked that I was glad that most of the people that work at Women of Faith have had life give them a kick or two along the way because it makes us real. She said that it helps, but that it didn't have to be that way.
At that point I felt like those rabbits, broken, flawed, and hanging on my cracks for dear life. Even to the point of wearing them like a badge of honor. That counts as ridiculousness.
I realized through the words of my co-worker that God wants to spoil us with whole lives without cracks and tragedy and by hanging on with pride to our flaws we can keep him from spoiling us.
Needless to say I am in the process of getting rid of those personal cracks. As for the rabbits? I got rid of them too. Sorry mom. :)
Read more...
