This last two months has been... interesting? I'm not sure if that's the right word in all honesty. In fact, I'm not sure if any of the words you are going to find here are the right words. However, I am going to write them anyway. The question is where do I begin to process things, which lesson do I start with first, who do I give the first thank you too...
Instead of trying to give you the play by play of the last two months, let me just start with the most recent lesson. A lesson, that I did not realize God was teaching me until about 10 minutes ago, before I pulled my MacBook off the counter. You see, today something happened to me for the first time... today, I broke the screen on my iPhone. I know what some of you may be thinking, "first world problems" and you would be correct. When I dropped my phone (without a case mind you) as I got out of my truck this morning, and watched it fall in slow motion to the concrete floor of the parking garage, I felt the anger and disappointment rise inside me. I have carried a smart phone for 6 years, and never once have I broken it. In the 14 years I've had a cell phone, I can't recall ever breaking one. I began to beat myself up over it with silly thoughts of "Why didn't you have a case on it dummy" and "If you would be more careful this wouldn't have happened". Funny thing is, those things aren't true nor are there guarantees that a case or being more careful would have prevented it from breaking. Naturally I told a few people, and the one response that really stuck out was "It just took one bad tumble". All day I kept playing that comment over and over in my head. When 10 minutes ago it hit me that God was using this silly phone to teach me a lesson.
You see, the last two months have been difficult for me, despite the fact that very few people know that. I haven't been honest with a lot of people about the things I've been facing. In fact, the person who sent that text today, doesn't even know the whole story -- or the impact that text had on me. That statement "It just took one bad tumble" pretty much sums up the last two months. It's been one bad tumble for me on an emotional and spiritual level the last 8 weeks. Of course my immediate reaction to a broken phone, was that I needed to replace it. Buy a new one, fix it somehow, do anything I could to "bandage" it. That's what we do with our lives when they take a tumble. We look for the quick fix, we look to replace the problem. The funny thing, is that aside from a few cracks at the top of the screen it's fully functioning, there's nothing wrong with it really. In all honesty, as I've sat here this evening, I've noticed how much better care I've taken of it. Which is how we should respond to our lives when we take a tumble. God doesn't replace us once we are broken, he doesn't try to find a way to change what has happened in the past... He uses it to teach us to take better care of our lives, and shows us that there is nothing wrong with a few cracks.
I've always talked about the beauty of brokenness. Somehow I forgot to listen to my own words. I talk a lot about transparency, but I've failed miserably to do that in the last 8 weeks as well. While I don't think I need to list out all of the cracks at this moment, mainly because I know some of them are meant to be between myself and God, I do know that I needed to write this. Maybe it's just for myself, maybe it's so God can continue to teach me the things He's doing, the ways in which He is working. I'm not really sure. What I do know is that God is starting to connect the cracks that have appeared the last 8 weeks. He's teaching me the stories of each line, showing me what it leads to next. And just like with this phone, those cracks are going to grow, change direction, connect to one another, and ultimately at some point, create a situation in which I need to retire the current version of my phone and move on to something new, and something different. Which, is exactly what He does with our "one bad tumble". Over time, the wounds, the cracks, the brokenness I have felt over the last 8 weeks will grow some, it will change directions, they will all connect with each other. And once they do, God will use that time to retire that season of my life, that version of me, and move me towards something new, and something different.
The beauty is in the breakdown.
Grace and Peace,
B
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