A Life in Pieces
My mother is an amazing person. She works so hard and gives so much of herself away. I remember watching her as a child wondering how it was possible for her to give so much. After my parents divorced when I was eleven she became the primary caregiver with my father being present on and off for the next several years. She worked full time, took care of us full time, and gave her life to making sure her family was as secure as we could be. I remember days when she would sleep in the middle of the day, crashing after weeks and weeks of constant work and pressure to provide and perform.
She was not allowed to breathe, she was not allowed to fall, she was not allowed to break. Whether it was self-inflicted or her response to a harsh world and the demands of life, she carried the weight of the world on her shoulders, often times attempting to find the bright side in things, even if the bright side was that it would get better “one day”. Just keep it together, push the problems down or away, and keep trudging forward.
I’m grateful for her unbelievable sacrifice, and today I’m sad for what she had to “be” in order to feel like she succeeded. So many of us live in this world of demands, whether aware or not we have an expectation of perfection that we place on ourselves to perform for those around us. Some of us probably experienced messages growing up that we needed to be perfect to earn love or to keep it, that care was conditional based upon performance and appearance.
It’s an exhausting life and it won’t last long. Eventually, as so many in Recovery have discovered, the façade will come crashing down. And I only have to say one thing about that… Thank God that it does. Thank God that he takes the towers we have built, the walls we have constructed, and lets them fall to the floor, shattering into tiny pieces. As long as those walls of who we are and what we have built stand, we will constantly believe that we are the ones responsible for our well-being.
When our walls of pride fall they break into pieces revealing a story about ourselves. The pieces reveal the things we believe, the things we have clung too, the events in our life that have reinforced messages of perfectionism and performance based living. In Recovery, we let the walls fall, we embrace the broken pieces of a shattered life that we have built, and we bring them to God, like a child that carries pieces of a precious vase to their father and says, “it’s broken, will you fix it?”.
When we begin to admit our own brokenness, the things that make us weak, the things that make us needy, the things that we don’t have answers for, we can begin to experience the help, healing and hope that is offered only through Christ. Psalm 34:8 says “The Lord is close to the broken hearted and saves the crushed in Spirit.” Without brokenness we will remain at a distance from God. Our brokenness is God’s invitation for healing.
Will you acknowledge your brokenness today? Will you invite God into the pieces of your life, the embarrassing places, the shameful places, the un-fathered and un-mothered places, the places you hate most when you see them? Look into the mirror that is the Word of God, let it reveal who you are, faults and failures, gifts and talents, and bring all of you to all of God.
Start by asking these questions…
1. What am I most ashamed of in myself?
2. What area of my life am I pretending to be proficient in?
3. What am I most afraid of people finding out about me?
Bring your answers to God, let Him speak to you in your most vulnerable place, and be amazed at what happens when he responds. Bring your answers to others, let them receive you in your most vulnerable place, and enter a depth of relationship you never knew existed. Step into your brokenness and into full life today.
-Evan
