Embrace It

Getting honest about what's broken in your life and what it's taken from you...and threatening to take...is the first step toward healing, but to be honest, there's another very important step that is closely related to that. 

You have to embrace it. 

You have to embrace what's broken in your life. You have to let it be broken. You have to live to the best of your ability within your limitations and let yourself feel what it's like to have those restrictions around you. 

That seems defeatist. That seems silly, perhaps. It definitely runs counter to the "I'm fine" culture that tells us to put on a brave face, wipe our tears, live our lives, and not let anything be any less than everything we want out of it. 

But here's the thing: most of us can't swim upstream. Not for very long. We're throwing our energies away and leaving ourselves with nothing left to fight with, and we're losing not just our battles, but the war. 

And I think there's a certain value in being able to simply say, this is what I can do right now. This is what I'm capable of and this is what I'm not capable of. There's value in learning to say no to the things that are beyond your capabilities. There's value in learning what it's like to be a person of limited abilities. 

That value is (at least) two-fold. First, it gives you an appreciation for the life that you have. You learn to like things more. You learn to savor them, to enjoy them. 

Second, it tells you what you want. It helps you figure out what's important to you. It's like figuring out all the empty places in front of you and getting to decide what you want to fill them up with...if anything. 

Maybe you discover that your brokenness creates spaces in your life that you really like. That you suddenly have margin for the first time, margin that you would never have recognized if you had still been using all of that space to try to fight. To try to get back what used to be there. 

Maybe, as it turns out, you like having that space and it becomes precious, if not sacred, to you. Suddenly, it becomes part of the shape of your new life and you find that you're willing to do a lot of things to protect it. Like...maybe not even want to get back some of what you lost. Maybe you're okay simply losing it. 

You don't know what your life is or what it can be or what it feels like unless you're truly living it, and you aren't truly living it unless you embrace it. All of it. The good and the bad. The successes and the failures. The triumphs and the troubles. The well places and the broken places. 

Oh, we should talk about the wells. (Maybe later...) 

The point is...get honest about your brokenness and then, embrace it. It's the best way to figure out where your life is really at and where you want it to go from here. 

Only then can you begin the true work of real healing. 

With the help of the Lord, of course.