Beautifully Broken

I had not planned on writing anything on this blog for awhile. Why? Because I am working on another project that I should have started a year ago and didn’t. Now I am 20 pages into that project and it is liberating!

Ok, don’t get off track here Cindy.

I had not planned to write anything, and I am home sick. Its ok, it is only a head cold but I don’t want to go out in public and scare the masses with my sniffling and sneezing and swollen eyes during a pandemic. That would not be good.

God has laid something heavy on my soul and it needs to be shared.

We are all broken messes. We know that in our minds. BUT do you know that in your heart? Let me elaborate.

I used to think, oh yes, we are all broken messes. Yep. That’s right. God will fix us.

I knew it in my mind. But I didn’t know it in my heart. In the same breath that I proclaimed that God healed all of us broken messes, I would curse the drug addict living next door. I am not proud of it. In any way. But let me tell you how God can change a heart.

I have never liked neighbors that I have perceived to run drugs. I have smelled marijuana, seen needles lying around, and have found makeshift bongs in the trash. I have even seen people rummaging through my garbage for pills. I always feared for my kids and the security of our home. YET I never did anything about it except maybe call the cops a couple times.

“Normal”, right? Yep.

But I was made to be set apart, not normal.

One day I was working at a home who’s owner had just died, painting with others because the exterior was in desperate need of a face lift. It was warm out and I was getting thirsty and hungry. The back door opened and I was handed a glass that held a watermelon margarita by a man who had a humbled look on his face. I knew this individual was an addict. I’d seen it, seen the evidence. I had expected the loathing to well up inside of me, but it didn’t. In that moment I saw a man who had just lost the mother that he loved and he was offering a gift of gratitude. I no longer saw an addict.

That was the first time God softened my heart to addicts.

Not long after my gratitude encounter I was sitting in a booth at a restaurant doing Bible study. An individual that worked there came over and started talking to me. I had talked to her many times before. But this time God had laid something on her heart. In the span of an hour I had heard about her struggle, her hurt, and how God released her from her addiction. It is one of the most powerful testimonies I had ever heard. She was radiant, and I knew what Light it was that she was projecting. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. You want to talk about eyes wide open and humbled. Wow.

That was the second time God softened my heart to addicts.

After those two encounters, I saw addiction and the people who struggled with it in a whole new light. God knew what I needed to be beautifully broken. I was defining God’s children by their addiction, not by who God made them to be.

But now. Now I see things so much more clearly. Addiction is a symptom of something greater. Hurt, trauma, whatever you want to call it. It is there. And those of us who are set apart are called to help the hurting.

I was the one who needed broken in that moment, not them. I was so conditioned to “normal” that I could not look past their addiction and my own selfish heart. We are called to be set apart. We are called to do the hard things. We are called to walk in the dark places shining the light of Christ. We are called to do the work with no conditions.

1 Peter 4:8 says Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. Love covers a multitude of sins. Like when Christ died on the cross to wash ALL of our sins clean because he LOVED us unconditionally? Yes. Exactly like that. Jesus was not a conditional sacrifice. So who are we to pick and chose who we show Christ’s light to? We cannot.

Today I want to challenge you. Where does God need to beautifully break you? Where is your heart hard? Every beautifully broken piece is part of a testimony that God will use!

Galatians 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.