Can I just be real for a little bit?
I’m in a season of grieving and seeking…deep, gut-wrenching, heart-rending grieving and seeking. The kind where some days, all I can do is cry with no words attached. I find myself asking hard questions that I never imagined I would ask of the God I trust. I feel my heart being so so tempted to build up the walls once again and grow cold in the face of rejection, hurt, disappointments, betrayal, illness, and hardships. Life happens and we can’t control it. It isn’t like I haven’t been here before. And I am quite sure this isn’t my last time to experience hurt in my life. Yet, for whatever reason, this seems to be a pivotal moment, a cross-roads, if you will. I’m at a stop sign in the intersection of life and I can’t turn to the right or the left without some Divine direction. Even if I wanted to make a decision, I am deeply compelled to AWAIT direction from the One Who knows which way to go. Ever been there?
I heard a saying, once, that time spent with God is never wasted time. In this season, I am counting on that, because it is all I have the strength to do. While I bear up underneath others’ scorn and judgment of me, while I quietly endure the loss of what could have been fruitful relationships, while I fight the shame of those that have been haughty toward me or my family, while I battle an illness that no one seems to understand fully, and thus, have no concrete answers on how to treat it, I stand before God a broken woman. While I don’t understand how following Him led me into more sorrow than I could imagine, I kneel before Him crushed in Spirit. I mourn for what was and I mourn for what could have been. I am broken. I’m lost and don’t know which way to turn. I am broken. I’m tired and can’t put on the happy face that everyone around me wants to put on. I’m broken. I’m broken and I can’t fix me. While the rest of the world rushes past me on either side, making me feel like my life isn’t moving at all, my spiritual legs can only kneel at the standstill of God’s throne. I’m so utterly broken.
And for now, it is okay to be broken because I am broken before Him. I know that because His Word tells me that He is very close to the broken-hearted. (Psalm 34:18) That He does not despise me in my crushed state. ((Psalm 51:17) And…if anyone can fix broken, it’s Him.
As broken as I am, I am filled with a confidence that He truly is Who is He says He is. He is the Yoke Breaker, the Healer, the Deliverer, the Chain Looser, the Provider, the One Who Sees.
God has already given me a Word of hope for 2015- “It is time for the weary to rejoice.” I’m clinging to that Word these days. Weariness has the potential to corrode every shred of faith you might have left. It can eat away at your physical health too. I’ve literally spent days in bed before due to sheer weariness. I can completely relate with Kind David when He spoke to the Lord saying,
“When I kept silent,
my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long.
For day and night
your hand was heavy on me;
my strength was sapped
as in the heat of summer.”
(Psalm 32: 3-4)
Or when Elijah was so fed up with the persecution breathing down his neck that He ran and laid down under the broom tree and prayed that he might DIE. (1Kings 19:1-8) Oh have I been THERE! Whether my own sin brought me to these places, or persecution and attack from the enemy, the weariness of this life ate away at my well-being. But one thing I know is that no matter what brings me to these places of hurt, despair and weariness- God never intends for me to stay there and He always intends to make Himself Greater in my heart and confidence when it is all said and done.
So I’m broken right now, it’s okay, because I know He is working on me. I’m broken right now, but answers flood in daily as I seek His truth and realize that I could learn to trust Him even more, declare His Word even more, surrender to His healing medicine even more. I’m broken, but I’m still alive. In a world that tells me to give up, to stop believing, to ‘curse God and die”, I reach my hands upward and offer up a sacrifice of praise, the oil of my ‘alabaster box’, my deepest worship because I know He hears me, even in my brokenness- my messy, sometimes angry, sometimes fearful, fragile brokenness.
I rejoice, not because all my desires have yet manifested, but I rejoice because I know Who manifests them. Because, if weariness corrodes, then rejoicing must strengthen! I rejoice and I return to the basics, the disciplines of simply sitting at His Feet, of unadulterated worship, of seeking out His Words to me during this time, of fasting and prayer. Keeping it simple, but keeping it clear. Removing the “noise” of the world, so that I can hear the Voice that matters. And that is where I will stay until the direction comes.
Are you broken? Are you weary? It doesn’t matter what area or areas of your life are shattered. If it’s broken, it just needs fixing. Consider shutting out the noise for a season and returning to the basics of your faith. Come back to the core of when you first believed, sweep away the debris that complicates that core, and just start by simply coming back to HIM. Not your doctrine, not your methods, not your ideas, not your vision…just come to HIM.
Once you’re there, at His Feet, be honest. Tell Him EVERYTHING (no holding back, He sees it all anyways) and know that your King can fix any kind of broken- any.kind. All He needs is your heart and willingness to let Him work. Broken heart, broken marriage, broken family, broken friendship, broken fellowship, broken YOU- precious daughter- STOP HIDING behind pretension and fear and doubt and unbelief because…He can fix it all, because He can HEAL it all. Come into His light, come out confessing, bearing it all in honesty and abandon to Him…Won’t you trust Him? Turn it over, give it all in sweet surrender and then wait for Him. Rejoice while you are waiting. He will come.
If, like me, you find yourself broken, or surrounded by brokenness– Come back to the basics in Him. He’s there, He’s right there. Let Him take every broken, jagged, shattered piece and fix it like only He can. Give Him the time to work and to heal. Trust Him, He’s called “Master” for a reason. And trust Him even further, if He decides to make something completely brand new, even a brand new you.
A brand new start, a brand new vocation, a brand new ministry, a brand new heart– He is in the business of Brand New too and that’s why we don’t have to fear anything broken. He didn’t fear being broken for us, and we shouldn’t fear any broken before us. Let the Creator’s Hands work. Let the broken be fixed. Make way for the Brand New & Let the weary rejoice!
~Nicci, FVWoman
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