Lately, I’ve been journaling about being broken.  Some of the thoughts scribbled in my journal reflect an immense heaviness in my heart.  I remember once when I was about eleven, while trying to balance myself on a guardrail, I tumbled off.  My knee had a huge gash in it.  I ended up having stitches, which caused me to limp for many weeks afterward.  To this day, I bear the scar of my unwise escapade.  But the recent thoughts in my journal have been of things that don’t quite heal as quickly as a sore knee.

Brokenness hurts.  The repercussion of sin, betrayal or loss hurt much more than falling off that guardrail.  But I’ve learned three things during the hard times; Jesus is closer than I realize, I’m stronger than I imagined and I am loved by my heavenly Father more than I ever felt possible.  In the difficult times, when the emotional and spiritual pain is excruciating, my faith has undergone growth spurts that I never thought possible.  God makes poetry out of our pain. As one author put it, “God’s greatest purposes emerge through the cracks created in brokenness.”

When we walk through our brokenness with God, we come out a different person.  Memories of our difficulty, what God revealed to us in our pain and how He put us back together…these will always remain.  Even though we are whole again, we are also changed.  We become closer to our God – who suffered physical pain on the cross, but also bore the immense weight of the world’s sin.

And that is why despite our pain, our spirit blooms – stronger, more determined and with a deeper appreciation of God, who is constantly drawing us closer to Him.

It takes a heart broken by conviction of sin, baptized by the Holy Spirit, and crushed into submission to God’s purpose to make a person’s life a holy example of God’s message.
Oswald Chambers