What to Do When You are Broken
When a bone breaks, it can usually be fixed with a cast, splint, or pins. If the mind breaks, there is medication, therapy, and counseling. These things help when there is something broken in the mind. Emotionally, we can be broken as well. Long term stress or trauma can break our spirits, and we can lose hope. As we reflect on that, we realize that God is our refuge, our strength, our protector. We know that He will bring us through. All of us have been broken, or will be. We don’t want it. We don’t like it. We want God to remove that burden from us.
But what do we do when we are broken, when we are shattered into a million pieces. This can happen to any of us, and it can seem like it will last forever. When it does, we question why. One way to look at it is that God is refining us to get rid of impurities, to get us to the point where He can completely transform us. He is getting us back to dust. A painful process, but part of transformation.
But dust is valuable. We were created from dust, yet God calls us valuable.
“Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7, NIV). In John 9:5-6, Jesus uses dust to restore a man’s sight. “… After saying this, He spit on the ground, made some mud from the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes.” Then the man could see. All because God used something common to make something beautiful and to restore that which was broken.
Finally, dust, when mixed with water, becomes clay. And in the potter’s hands, clay can become something beautiful, new, and fresh – and useful again. Our brokeness can bring us down and defeat us (which the enemy of our soul would love), or we can put it all in God’s hands and let Him make it into something valuable, useful, and productive. God sees the beauty and the value within us, and He wants to refine us through our brokenness, in order to bring that beauty out. He knows what we are going through, and He will continually see us through. Brokenness is a common thing, and God can use that for good.
“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted, and saves those who are crushed in spirit” (Ps. 34:18 – NIV).
This writing’s content is inspired by the writing of Lisa Terkurest, from her upboming book, “It’s Not Supposed to Be This Way”, and from the article, “Shattered Beyond Repair” (link below)
