Walking Through your pain~Day 7

As we talk about brokenness and getting through it, I remember back to just about a year and a half ago, when my daughter launched for her World Race.

Everyone was talking about brokenness, and how necessary it was.  How it was “part of the process”.  I remember sitting in session after session of the parent launch, hearing about all this brokenness and wondering to myself….what are they talking about?  

How can brokenness be a good and necessary thing?  In my mind, I always thought brokenness was a bad thing…we must be strong and never broken, that was for weak people.  Its for people in dark places. Its certainly not for me.  

As the saying goes, “that was then, this is now”.  Boy was I wrong about this whole brokenness idea.  In about month 4 of my daughters race, God brought me to a place of total brokenness.  One day I literally threw myself on the floor (a bit dramatic I know but it happened) and sobbed and sobbed.  I had no control over myself and my emotions. 

When I physically had no more tears, I laid there asking God for help.  I told him “I can’t do this alone, I need you.”  I felt such a calm come over me in that moment.  I got up, dried my face, looked up and said “thank you”.  

The Bible calls this broken behavior “sin.” There is original sin – the sin we were born into – and then there is brokenness that comes from hard living. There’s a connection between our pain and the brokenness of our lives

When we are unable to process our pain, it leaks out in all kinds of illegitimate ways. Richard Rohr says, We either transform our pain or we will transmit it.

Much of this course is about the process of transforming our pain and then using it as a tool to help heal others. There are multiple ways to work through our brokenness. Many people seek healing through counseling. Just talking about it – exposing it to the light of day is therapeutic. It introduces humility to the equation and with it, grace. James 4:6 says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

One of the reasons Seth Barnes has given much of life to taking people on kingdom journeys is that they are such a great venue to process pain. People need to talk about the pain in their lives.

Going on a good kingdom journey takes us into a place where we experience brokenness and are ashamed of it. The journey doesn’t break us per se, we just get to where we can see what was there all along. We think we’ve arrived at a place of brokenness when in reality we’ve just become aware of that trash bag we were carrying with us.

I didn’t have to go across the world on a kingdom journey.  My kingdom journey started the day my daughter left the US.  I was thrown into my own journey toward the Kingdom right in my own home.

I’ve asked God why it’s so important that we embrace our brokenness. He showed me that he takes us into brokenness in part to make us whole, and in part so that we can become more fully a member of the body of Christ.

Jesus was broken for us. And his body (that’s us, the body of Christ), is broken insofar as we don’t function as a unit – we work in isolation, but rarely in the coordinated way that we were intended to function.

Yes, we are part of his body. But to the extent that we are independent and self-sufficient, we deny that reality.

So here’s the great irony – we must be broken if we are to play our part in the body of Christ. “I delight in weaknesses,” Paul proclaims.

Most of us feel disconnected in life. We long for closer friends, better church, and greater intimacy. To get there, we have to first connect with our brokenness.

Application

1. Pain leads to brokenness. Where are you broken?

2. How has your pain led to brokenness?

3. Pain is a teacher. What does the pain that you’ve inventoried want to teach you?

Bonus Q: Have you gotten to the place where you have allowed God to use your brokenness to heal others? If not, pray and ask him to.