I Was Never Broken

-
For a long time I have referred to some of the struggles in my life as ‘brokenness’.  I don’t say this anymore.  I am not broken.  The bible says we are ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’ (Psalm 139:14).   Do this mean we won’t struggle?  No.  We will struggle.  What we do to cope with this struggle can be labeled as brokenness.

So I have been learning to reframe brokenness as ways of getting along that I perhaps no longer need.  Either I have new tools, or the assumptions about what I need are no longer valid.  My so-called brokenness is not brokenness at all.  It is strength.  It got me through a difficult time when I had no other tools available to me.  My previous self wasn’t broken.  She was courageous and strong.

If you stop looking at yourself from a framework of brokenness, it gives you power.  You suddenly realize that, with God beside you, you can handle way more than you think.  By not starting from a place of deficiency, you fight for yourself and what you know will work for you.


So I invite you to retell your narrative with me.  You are strong.  God loves you and has always believed in you.  I believe in you too.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jillian Michaels - Maximize Your Life

-
I was really excited when I heard Jillian Michaels was coming to Winnipeg.  If you don't know who Jillian Michaels she is the trainer that is known for being on the Biggest Loser.  Jillian's contestants are often the winners of the Biggest Loser (as was the case this year with a contestant who had everything against her in the beginning.)  The reason I like Jillian is not because of her training skills.  It is because she has an ability to get to the heart of a contestant and figure out what it is that is getting in the way of their goals. When she came on stage see was instantly endearing.  She swapped her high heels for flip flops saying that she felt like she had done her duty by coming out in them.  She broke down what she was going to talk about - nutrition, working out, mind.  She was real about the fact that many of the people who came to see her, wanted to know how to lose weight so she spent the first hour talking about it.  The second ...
Read more

Fair Weather

-
Usually this time of year I start feeling anxious. I wonder if I will be able to cope with the demands of a fall and winter schedule. This year is different. I am excited about re-engaging community. I can’t wait to see what God has for me. As I have been pondering this, a frightening thought has come to mind. What happens when the weather changes? What happens if I get depressed? How will I deal with that? I don’t think that depression is something I have ever directly admitted on my blog. I have struggled with depression on and off since I was a teenager. One particularly bad winter I spent several months sleeping on the floor instead of my bed. It went undiagnosed until one year in my mid-twenties a friend of mine who is a nurse said she thought I was depressed. I have struggled with being a Christian who has depression. There are many in Christian circles who think it is a sin to be depressed – a form of bondage. They think that depression is always some sort of spiritu...
Read more

Some Stories Deserve A Pause

-
Image
I am behind on my devotions this week.  I decided to catch up this morning.  I read Judges 19 and I had to stop.  What just happened?   I spent a few minutes looking for bible commentaries that would help me understand the passage better.  For several more minutes I have just been sitting here trying to absorb the story. Here is my version:  man has a fight with his wife, she takes off for several months, man decides that he still loves her and goes after her, they decide to reconcile, hang out at the in-laws for a few days, they go off and get stuck in a bad city, stay at some guys house where they are threatened by some locals, man panics and throws his wife out to the locals, they rape her all night, she crawls back to the door where the man is staying, he opens the door and discovers she has died, he cuts her up into twelve pieces and sends her out to the tribes of Israel saying no worse crime has ever been committed. What a sad and difficult story....
Read more