Just a few years ago, I remember my husband saying if he had a favorite holiday, that it would be what the world calls Easter time-the season that brings Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday. I remember thinking that was kind of strange, just because it wasn’t the answer I expected. For me, the obvious choice would be Christmas time-Jesus’ birth in a stable, and a time where we gather around as family. A time where the snow falls, and we can make those traditional memories that come hand in hand with that time of year. When I asked him why he would pick Easter I was struck with how he talked of Jesus’ pain and rejection. He colored for me our Savior’s complete forsakenness, shame, and suffering. And how all the anguish of our sin and God’s wrath wrapped Him into a death that only He could bare. And he talked to me about how without Resurrection Sunday there would be no hope. We would be stuck in the grave. And as the conversation struck me then, I have also pondered it in the years following. I have considered how without being broken, you can’t be made whole. How our choice to fall into sin was all part of God’s plan to show His glory. Jesus was broken to make me whole. And I am able to reflect differently as an adult than I was as a child as to what it all means…what all this broken means.
I have come to see that there are a lot of broken and suffering people. We are all just broken people in need of grace. Why then can it be so hard to admit our brokenness? We put on our happiest faces. We pretend we are “ok.” Because, well, we ARE ok. We are redeemed, so we should be just fine. Maybe there’s a tendency to think that tears are a sign of weakness. That they make us less. Less Christian, less worthy…just plain less. Perhaps we think that our brokenness shouldn’t really be broken at all. It seems a little silly to be struggling with such trials. Or, other people just won’t understand, because, after all, they have it all together. Then there’s our pride-what will people think of me if they actually knew my broken?
For as long as I can remember I have struggled with feeling broken. Feeling like if I gave way to letting my broken shine through that I would be less. I felt the weight of sin upon my shoulders. Shame. Defeat. Scarred. I suppose I can still struggle with that thinking. Most days, I remember who I am. I feel God’s grace shining through like much needed sun on my soul, giving view to the healed over scar tissue I have left behind from all the broken I feel. But there are inevitable days when I feel the scars ripping open, feel them oozing over with the pain of yesterdays. I look at them, all those memories, and sit in silence, bemoaning my past. I wonder why God chose the way that He did for me. I wonder how I will explain brokenness to my children when they tell me they don’t feel they measure up. I wonder because at times I hardly know how to explain it to myself. But it’s in those times that I don’t realize that God was leading me, and continues to lead me, through the broken way to gather me in His perfect way.
I am downcast. Sins of youth are remembered. My failings as mother are stifling. Shortcomings as wife deplete me. Sins of others break me. My unworthiness as child of God shouts in my ear as I sit and try to remember something other than the brokenness. Satan is beating me down with his stick. And all I can see are those sin lines-those scar lines. And then I come across the woman of Mark 5. This poor woman with an issue of blood, who apart from whatever physical pain she may have suffered, deeply longed to think of herself as normal, not someone people turned away from in disgust. She was unclean, shameful, and alone. Being ceremonially unclean left her without a touch, a hug, a kiss, for twelve years. She was set apart from worshipping at the temple. She was an outcast. And yet, she touches Jesus clothes. And Jesus, the man of sorrows, the Comforter, He “immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, who touched my clothes?” (vs 30) He forced this woman to come to Him out of the shadow of her shame and admit her scheme and desperate need of Him. Jesus turned aside from helping Jairus, an important Jewish leader, to minister to this pathetic woman. He did more than heal her body, he made her clean. And his response to her? “Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.” Daughter…my dear daughter. Yes, this is what I am. A new identity. He’s never put off by my uncleanness, my brokenness…because He has holiness, and wholeness that covers it all.
Who are you? Are you the one who has personal sin crawling within, black as mold? Do you have secrets locked in your heart that are consuming you? Are you the parent with a machete tongue, prone to cut your children down? How about the bitter spouse, bent on holding onto your “rights?” Are you the one who has a lifetime of sins that plague your conscience? Maybe sins of sexual impurity that seem to have marked you for life? Or maybe you have neglected to care for your body in the way God has commanded you. You overeat or undereat, struggling with the fact your body is made in HIS image, not your own. Or is your trial the doctor’s report? Are you the parent watching your child suffer under cancer treatments? A piece of you seemingly dying with each treatment they receive. Or are you the child burying the parent who didn’t grow as old as you thought they would? The parent you just started to appreciate now that you have started a family of your own. Are you the aching mother who just emptied her womb in miscarriage? You had hopes and dreams of keeping that sweet baby safe in this broken world. Then there’s the ever present pain that eats at the woman who doesn’t have the children she has always hoped and prayed for. Or do you have with weight of “provider” and “man of understanding” on your shoulders, and you just don’t feel you measure up? Are you the abused spouse struggling to find your worth? Maybe you are the single man or woman placing value in the companionship found in marriage over your companionship with God, causing you to believe you are deficient. Or you could be the friend trying to hold up a friend. Where is your struggle? Where is your broken?
We don’t always weep with those who weep as well as we should. We don’t always listen like we are called, and we don’t always bear up others burdens in a way that Christ would. But we don’t always weep well either. It can make us uncomfortable. It feels like it may give way to sin if we admit we are hurting. Sometimes in the trials we are led into temptation-it’s true, in this imperfect world, we don’t do it perfectly. It will be marked with sin. But it strikes me-it’s a command. “Weep with those who weep.” Our Creator knows we will weep in this broken world. And this is a command Jesus carried out so perfectly. He wept at the graveside of Lazarus, entering into the suffering and brokenness of His people. His unfailing love for his friends didn’t allow Him to be indifferent to their pain. This man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, He showed emotion. He was able to weep in compassion, and He was able to sob as He entered Jerusalem on the back of a colt, knowing sin has so marred the world…knowing that the hearts of the people did not understand who He was as Savior.
I understand now more than I did as a child. It’s a heartbeat within me that knows it’s in the shattered places, with broken people, that we are the most near the brokenness of Christ. Suffering is where God gives the most healing intimacy. Our brokenness shows us the gospel. I see Rahab, prostitute, mother of Jesus. I see David, man after God’s heart, whose bones waxed old as sexual sin consumed him from within. Then there’s Gideon, who in his pride forgot to give God the glory and fell into idolatry. And I see denying Peter…the rock who in shame wept bitterly as he was sifted into denying his Savior. I remember meek Moses who struck the rock in anger. And there’s Samson who had an eye for women that led to his downfall. And Paul who was once Saul…I often think about the persecutor turned apostle who had so many of his own memories that must have added to his personal brokenness. What was his thorn in the flesh? I wonder if it is similar to mine. To yours. I see these people…all of God’s people, who are my people. My broken people whose wounds are Christ’s wounds. I see them and I see me. And when I see my brokenness clearly, I am blessed and comforted to see the shame and raw pain Christ bore there on that cross. When my eyes wander, narrowing in on myself and all my broken sin, I fall into minimizing the gospel, thinking my Savior can’t be enough. O wretched man that I am! I pray God continually keeps us from that temptation. There is no sin, no hurt, that isn’t covered. I pray “Heal the wounds, but leave the scars as reminders of how merciful Thou art. Take the sorrow but leave Thy grace. Remind me that my broken gives way to the abundant riches I have in Jesus’ brokenness on the cross. And there I am Daughter…there I am whole. And there I see cross lines in the place of scar lines. Jesus in His perfect wholeness chose to take me while I was yet broken. And what did He do with my broken? He broke Himself for it. So where is your broken? Find it… and know that he broke Himself for it. And then by grace, break open your alabaster jar and praise Him for it.
So Beautiful, dear sister! 💖