The Broken, The Harvest, and Freedom Follows

We are all broken...somewhere.  A fracture here; a crack there...no one can pass through life without a wound.  Some wounds are of our own making. Others are presented to us as if they are our fault, but they aren't, they are merely packaged that way.  Then we find that, at some point, our bodies can no longer withstand the weight that we were never meant to carry.  We then crumble beneath the burden.  Scattered, broken, pieces.

One day at church we were having communion and our pastor was talking about how Jesus was broken for us.  That he shed this blood offering for our sin.  It was as if God came right into my ear and whispered, "I was broken for your brokenness, not just your sin.  I mourn this with you…oh, beloved your pain pain's me, I'm broken with you.  I'm so sorry for this, but I won't have you be broken by yourself.  So here I am, laying across the floor with you."  I thought to myself, maybe when I pick up these pieces, my pieces and Jesus' pieces, I could put them together so that my whole self fits right.  So that my pieces and His pieces become our pieces.  So that this communion that everyone talks about, but only partly understands, could be real.  Jesus doesn't just want to be my friend, He wants to be stitched in with me.  He wants to share this vessel of my body.  He's pleading with me to include His pieces as I try to harvest myself.

So I sat, wishing that I could leave certain pieces of me on the ground to decompose into the earth and be gone.  This was my battle…Jesus put that piece in my hand, that piece that I never accepted and longed to be free from.  I threw it as hard and as far as I could, only to see it reappear right back at my feet.  He told me that He could transform it, and I honestly never trusted that.  I honestly fought with the idea that maybe I didn't want it transformed…I wanted it gone.  Unfortunately my story is written in permanent ink, and I don't have the liberty to erase chapters.  So what other choice did I have? I stomped my feet yelling in God's face, "I DON'T WANT IT!!!!  GET RID OF IT!!!!  MAKE IT GO AWAY!!!"  I felt Him gently caressing my cheek as He cried with me, saying, "Oh, if I could…but that is not my way.  There's something I have for you here.  I'm sorry for this thorn, but this will be something some-day.  I know you don't want to, but trust this...trust Me."   I saw Him pick that piece back up, along with one of His own, and He pressed them together, molding them into another piece that would fit into the hole that I struggled to protect.  His giant hand rested on my shoulder to calm my anxious trembling.  He placed it in the center of my back.  The place I could not see nor reach, the perfect place for a hole that I didn't want to acknowledge.  But He could reach it.

Freedom truly does follow.  The moment I accept all of myself, the burden lightens and the tightness in my chest, that I've come to see as normal, has disappeared.  The freedom comes from that acceptance...from my willingness to allow God to mold me into something new.  It is still there, that piece.  Although, it no longer haunts me, it no longer shames me...it no longer threatens my identity.  "I" am not identified by what has happened to me...my identity is revealed in what I do with what has been handed, forced, or presented to me.  How strange and wonderful it is to feel weightlessness in my heart.  To no longer feel angry, and only a lingering sadness for what could have been...because I would be lying if I said otherwise.  But this, this feeling I would choose any day.  This is the way it seems...to be broken, to harvest, and to accept my freedom.