We don’t do New Years Resolutions in our house, but we do participate in what I call a “restructuring”. We take a moment to think about the year behind and the year ahead. What things do we need to be focusing on or adding or subtracting. What things should we be praying about, etc. This past year we began to focus on teaching the kids what it means to have good character and we intend to keep that trend this year also.
But it became important to me that the kids know what good character in our family means and why it is important to us. So we made a list together of the character traits most important to us that they learn and stand for as members of our family. A mission statement of sorts for them to hang their hearts on.
We made the list and hung it by our breakfast table. After a few days passed it hit me. There was a very important character trait missing.
Being broken.
The rest of the list is useless without brokenness. It is just a list of overwhelming odds that we can’t achieve on our own. We can want to be those things and they are a good goal, but our humanness just can’t do them on our own. We are too selfish and too sinful by nature to achieve such goodness.
We must be broken first. We must recognize our brokenness to begin.
We must surrender that very brokenness to the one who died to made us whole.
My heart friend Rose always says that God can use the broken-hearted best of all. It is from a place of brokenness that our weakness is secured and God’s strength is made perfect. He can be glorified best when from brokenness, goodness can come.
It is the hardest to bear to watch my child’s heart get broken. To watch his or her little heart get shattered by the pain and relentlessness of chronic Lyme disease and what havoc it created in their little bodies. I can’t stand it, but that very brokenness has made them stronger and will make them stronger still.
I want them to know that loving completely comes from being broken first. We cannot love unconditionally on our own with God filling us first. We cannot have true integrity without the Holy Spirit’s voice. I mean really, the whole list is completely dependent on our heart being devoted to Jesus.
To heal from chronic illness, to fully heal physically, emotionally and spiritually, we must surrender our brokenness.
My physical body might have been a wreck in the height of my Lyme, but my heart was in worse shape. It was broken and selfish and ungrateful for the gift of health and life and of each moment. I finally realized I wanted my heart to heal no matter if my body was ever able to. I wanted my poverty stricken heart to be made full again. I wanted to overflow and shine and plug back into the world and made a bigger impact.
I had to surrender my brokenness. I had to be broken.
The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. (Psalm 34:18)
He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. (Psalm 147:3)
Before you begin the healing journey, or if you already have. Make the choice today to let your emotional and spiritual selves heal right along side your physical one. The healing of your whole self is necessary, it is imperative.
Celebrate being broken, because it is in that we can be made whole again.
Blessings and healing,
Janice Fairbairn – The Lyme Evangelist
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