Getting Honest

We are good at compensating for our brokenness, but often, we're doing more damage to ourselves than we understand, even when our compensations are subconscious.  

We are also good at pretending. 

We are good at pretending that we're not ask broken as we are. We are good at pretending that we understand what's happening to us, that we've planned for every contingency, that we're "fine." We're good at pretending that we're making it. 

But pretending isn't helping us, either. 

What pretending does is it puts one more thing on your plate. One more draw on your energy. One more task on your weary soul. It requires more than you really have to give, and one of the reasons you're not getting better is because you're using all of your energies to cover yourself up, so you don't have anything left to tackle the actual problem. You don't have anything left to fight the actual fight. Your tank is perpetually empty because you're pouring it out on the grass that everyone can see, trying to make it greener, all the while really wishing you were growing flowers just a few feet away. 

We've all been there. We've all done it. Some of us are doing it right now. We're broken, and in response to our brokenness, we're breaking ourselves down. 

We don't start healing until we start getting honest. Until we acknowledge our limitations. Until we learn to say that right now, we just can't. 

Can't do that. Can't manage that. Can't add that to our schedule. Can't keep pushing through. Can't do this on our own. Can't overcome. Can't whatever.

We have to be real about the toll that our brokenness is taking on our lives and be real about the ways that it is shaping whatever season we're in. 

Only then can we be honest about the problem. Only then can we be real about what's going on.

Only then can we start to heal. 

I believe you have to let yourself feel the losses in your life. You have to let yourself feel the limitations. You have to let yourself be burdened by your brokenness so that you understand exactly what kind of box it's putting you in, how it is restricting you, how it's keeping you from what you want to do, all the things it's already taken away and the things it's threatening to add to its list. You have to let yourself feel the full weight of what it's like to be broken so that you know what you're facing. 

And when you do, you start to see how your life is built. You start to see how you want to build it. You start to understand the pieces that are important to you, the ones you want to get back, the ones that are the foundation for other things you want to build and to have and to grow in your life. 

You can't start healing until you know these things. Until you can name them. If you can't name them, how do you know what healing even looks like? How will you know when you get there? 

Healing starts when you're honest about what you're missing...and what it means to you.