Broken Things

This world is falling apart. We know that. 

We see it every day in the headlines, in our feeds, in our mirrors. We feel it in our hearts. Science tells us that things are always devolving into chaos unless some force is acting on them to keep them moving in a different direction. 

Those of us who have faith believe that our falling-apart world is also slowly being made new again, but it can be hard to reconcile these ideas. Especially when they impact our own hearts. 

I've been thinking about broken things lately...for obvious reasons and for some that are not so obvious. And one of the things that I'm coming to understand is that how we handle broken things depends on what's broken and how broken it is. 

There are some things that can break a little bit and you can put them back together right then and there before the break gets any worse. You can save these things fairly early on and get good life out of them for a good long while afterward, just by stepping in when you see the fracture starting to happen. At the same time, if you let these things go for too long, you'd lose them entirely. They wouldn't be able to be put back together. So you have to get to them early...or forsake them forever. 

On the other hand, there are things that have to completely fall apart before you can even start to mend them. Things that have to reach rock bottom, that have to become a pile of rubble. Things that have to have almost nothing left to them at all before they can be made new. If you try to step in too early, these things are too fragile at their fractures, and you end up breaking them worse than they were when you got them. These are the things that we look at and decide, "I will do something about that when it falls completely off." Because you just know it will be easiest - and strongest - at that point if you put it back together in that way. 

The same is true for us. 

There are times in our lives when we can be put back together fairly early on, seal the cracks, tighten up the loose bits, and get a good long life out of it. There are times when our cracks start to show and one good hug would put them all back together for us, one act of love, one moment of true connection. At the same time, in these situations, if you let us go too far, there's no getting us back. We're broken forever. (This is, in part and very roughly, how trauma breaks us...sometimes.) 

There are other times when you have to just let us fall completely apart, lose everything, hit rock bottom. We have to understand how helpless we are before we can accept the help that will put us back together. And sometimes, just breaking completely down like that lets all the crud and the junk fall through the breaks and into the sewers where it belongs. Then, we're left with good pieces to pick back up and put back together. (This is, in part and very roughly, how addiction breaks us...sometimes.) 

None of us wants to be broken, but this world is falling apart. Us included. And one of the best things we can do for ourselves and others is to understand how we're breaking so that we know what it has to look like to put us back together again. 

And one thing better than that is to have faith that our falling-apart world is also slowly being made new again...including us. 

Even when it's hard to understand how that's even possible.