Wide Open

10032016 Wide Open 

“Grief isn’t made to fit inside your body. It’s why your heart breaks.”  

Yes. 

The Broken Way 

I’m still broken and wrecked today.  I’m a lot less raw than I was on Friday night when I walked away in tears from hurts I can’t heal and pain I didn’t see coming. I’m a bit less tender than I was Saturday when I wrote The Gift.  I’m a little closer to center and I’m still moving.  It still hurts.  It doesn’t even out. I want salve.  The Balm of Gilead.  Still, I sit here with this. 

I’m not going to get over it and I can’t get around it, so I’ll just keep sitting with it. I’m just going to linger here, in the soft fog of pain and let it touch my soul; and while I do, I’ll share with you a bit about my own unspoken broken… 

“This is the deal we all get: guaranteed suffering. We all get it.  It is coming, unstoppable, like time.” 

My strongest spiritual gift is mercy.  What does that mean?  It means I’m sitting here crying about stuff that isn’t mine.  It means I’m hurting because I love people and I love them so much that I want to put my hands on them and take away all their pain like the man in The Green Mile.  It means that sometimes, I am so moved that I do stuff without thinking, which is wonderful and helpful and loving and kind and exhausting.  I don’t care because it matters to me.  It all matters. 

Intimate conversations in the past month have been about the suffering that goes on in all of our lives that some choose to hide, some can’t even see, and some deny.  It’s there.  Even Ann says it, “This is the deal that we all get: guaranteed suffering.”  Whether it’s because we don’t fit in, we want to stand out but we’re average, because a parent abandoned us, a lover scorned us, our minds fail us, our bodies betray us or our spirits are wrecked, we all have suffering.   

We are all broken, we are all bleeding out in one way or another.  Even the most dignified of people sitting in their designer suits with hundred dollar bills in their wallets are marred in some fashion. Nobody gets out unscathed.  So what’s your story?  Where is your pain?  How do you fit into the “we all have suffering” category?  Why do you bleed? 

I don’t want to be remembered for suffering through pain, silently absorbing all that happens with no outward emotion.  I don’t want to be remembered being the martyr.  I want to share with people that broken is okay.  Broken is even beautiful and tough and capable.  Broken is not the end. 

I want people to see the real me, the cracked vessel that God has used to speak truth, to breathe hope and to love into people for the past 20 years, maybe longer.  I want people to see that there is a real human being here who has tirelessly loved and honestly lived brutally raw and real and right in front of them and everyone else, without fear or reservation, without compromise.  For no gain, no reason other than to live fully, heart broke wide open and with every single broken piece of it to love the people who are in my path. 

If I were to go from this earth tomorrow, I hope that those I’ve loved into know where all that love comes from.  I hope that I’ve shared more about the saving grace that has been given to me, the tireless and relentless ways I’ve been pursued by a living God, and the ultimate sacrifice which was made for all of us by Jesus.  I hope that I’ve articulated appropriately that I’m not the one to thank or praise.  Because it’s not me doing this.  Because I’m finite.  I’m easily emptied and wasted.  The loving and the truth speaking come from the Holy Spirit given to me, alive in me because of Jesus Christ. 

The living with my heart broke wide open is only possible because of Him.  If you’ve followed my blog from the beginning, you know that I’ve kept most of my secrets to myself.  If you talk to me in person, you know that there are things I will word carefully, to protect those who have been created anew.  If you know me, then you know my heart never wants to hurt anyone.  NEVER.  So while I’m going to be sharing more and more of myself, it is not my intention to shame anyone, I don’t want to guilt anyone because that’s not my job.  My job is to feed those who are hungry, clothe those who are naked, sit with the sick, pray for those who are sick, offer freedom to the imprisoned, and to tell every single person about the power, the name, the blood of Jesus.  In order to do this, I believe God is calling me to be real.  To be broken and unashamed right in front of you.  Because if I can be redeemed and broken, then you can too. 

In her book, The Broken Way, Ann writes, “When the church isn’t for the suffering and broken, then the church isn’t for Christ.  Because Jesus, with His pierced side, is always on the side of the broken.  Jesus always moves into places moved with grief.  Jesus always seeks out where the suffering is, and that’s where Jesus stays.”  I’m not alone in my brokenness for the broken.  I’m not a radical person because I am merciful and want to have compassion on people.  Because Jesus. 

Jesus beaten, bruised, spat on, bloody, sliced open…the real broken. 

Jesus took on the broken humanness for us, and then died the broken, human death for us so that we can know without a doubt for sure that He understands broken.  He gets this feeling of weary worn out wasted love.  He knows how deeply it hurts and it’s not only a physical hurt, it’s a sore stricken spirit hurt that weighs a ton.  Jesus knows and He understands and he feels it all with us.  Because He lives. 

If we are the body of Christ, united in Him, created anew in Him, and powered by Him; then we are to be FOR the suffering and broken.  If we are following Him, we are going right straight into the place where nothing is unshattered.  If I am the church, then I am not going to sit in my pew in a building and claim to be it; I’m going to run into the places that are the darkest, the most ugly, and I am going to look at it eyes open, heart clear, and I am going to name it.  I’m going to call it beautiful. 

Jesus always moves into places moved with grief.  Yes.  He.  Does.  He’s moved into my grief.  He’s living there, right now.  The place where I grieve, He is breathing it all in.  The place where my mind spins and my heart hurts and my body aches – He is present and accounted for, not budging until I see Him there, and acknowledge that it is a real place where real love exists.  Jesus is moving into your place of grief too.  He wants to. Not because you need Him to, but because He wants to.  It’s all grace and it all comes from Him. 

While you’re at it, look at all your broken.  Then thank God that it’s broken.  The broken place is where the light gets in.  If you’re broken, you’re already open.  You’re already to the place where the good stuff can get in.  Broken is the beginning.  It’s how you get your beat up love to come out into the great wide open.  If you can live there, you’ll be living with Jesus, and He will take care of every single thing you need. 

Won’t you join me today in living fully, no matter how many shards your heart is in?  Can’t you try, just this once, to see the beauty of broken?  You won’t be sorry. 

*Excerpts taken from Ann Voskamp’s new book, “The Broken Way”.  Visit TheBrokenWay.com to learn more!