b r o k e n || the treasure of fragility
“Don’t lose it. Breathe. Keep it together. Breathe. Keep it together. Don’t cry!!!”
That’s the mantra I typically chant to myself over and over when I’m at the verge of a breakdown.
It’s what I recited when I got the horrible news that I faced expulsion from University, then again when I got the news that I was losing my job, and then again when I received the horrific news of my dearest cousin’s death. The mantra works! The more I say it, the more I can feel the lump in my throat dissolve and the tears in my eyes evaporate.The thing with ‘keeping it together’ is it works, until it doesn’t.
Inevitably my attempts at not reaching breaking point only lead to a paralysed state of suffocating in a sea of repressed emotions. You know the feeling, when you pretend not to be broken by the pain of an ugly break-up or when you hide away from the regret that follows after a major failure.
No matter how much you try to convince yourself, denying pain, anger or disappointment does not make it go away- instead it festers and grows into a poisonous fungus eating away at your heart (I know, that sounds super dramatic…but it’s REAL y’all!)
I’ve always believed that strength is measured by how much you can handle before you break. I’m learning that there is an even greater strength in how you treat yourself during and after ‘falling apart’.
See something beautiful that happens when I don’t have it all together. It forces me to turn to the One who does, the one who is not intimidated by ugly snotty crying! I strongly believe that, most times, God Himself leads me TO tumultuous storms just so He can lead me THROUGH them. My brokenness does not faze Him- I reckon He sees the wrecked, messy pieces of my life as an opportunity to create a beautifully glorious mosaic (Hence, glorious wreck...get it?)
Not only does God create beauty from brokenness, He has a good eye for tearing down knock off versions of beauty to reveal a pure beauty that only He can work. For example, my career was the one thing I felt like I ‘had together’ and the thought of being unemployed made me feel like a failure! Yet, in retrospect, I would never trade those months of unemployment that I spent ‘breaking’ before God as He demolished and remodelled my heart. Some of my greatest moments of humbling epiphany happened as a lay on my tear stained pillow as I lay on the floor of my friends’ apartment.
In the past few months I have had to learn to embrace pain, not to be afraid of the ‘mess’ and to walk through storms without a fear of getting wet!
I’ve learnt to see the value of agony, the treasure of fragility and the joy of sorrow!
We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves.
2 Corinthians 4:7
