Brokenness as an Idol

The school year is barely in flight and already my hand is propping my head and smooshing my check upwards. I’m not stressed or overwhelmed or tired. I’m just bored. For a lot of people the start of a school year means new. New classes, new schedule, new activities to try. However, I have (roughly) the same schedule that I had all summer and last semester. I haven’t seen change in a good long while. And as much as I love a good routine, I can’t stand it for very long. I need something new.

The other night in tears I sat on the swing with Ty and unloaded woes from the past couple weeks, some more worthy of tears than others, but all significant. Frustrated by my lack of change, upset about my tears, disappointed that I don’t feel like I have my life figured out. And Ty listened and validated and kindly offered Grace, no one knows who they are. This (meaning college) is the season of life when we are supposed to learn who we are.

I didn’t like those words very much. I don’t know what I expected him to say exactly. But seasons of life aren’t determined by age. I learned plenty of things as a 19 and 20 year old that people don’t learn until they are 35 or 47 years old. And there are things I have yet to learn that a 19 or 20 year old may know quite well.

The thing is, a lot of the things I learned as a 19/20 year old I learned independently. I spent time figuring out myself by myself. As a result, I am quite bad at being dependent. And now I am in a place of learning dependency and it is uncomfortable. I now have a community and close friends and a boyfriend who care about me and want to care for me. And instead of happily engaging in deeper relationships, I find myself habitually retreating to old ways and sour wounds.

At church last Sunday Micah preached about cutting off foreskin, and somehow out of those confusing and slightly offsetting verses he got this:

Help often comes from unexpected places in unexpected ways and A life of faith requires leaving things behind.

And that got me thinking, often when we think about “living a life of faith” we assume that means leaving something good and comfortable and moving into something hard and unsettling. Like, leaving a high-paying job to serve in an impoverished village. But what if the “things” we are “leaving behind” are actually bad things? Do we have to leave good for it to be an act of faith?

Lately I have been frustrated that my past wounds and brokenness seem to be too present. I thought I had worked through things and gotten rid of it, but it’s still here. There is an element of needing to remember our brokenness so that the Cross becomes all the more beautiful. But there is a time when holding onto our wounds becomes too much of a focal point. My wounds are familiar to me, and even though painful, there is a level of comfort. But in holding onto my past hurts, I am denying Jesus’ sacrifice.

Is it possible for something as distasteful and painful as a broken heart to become an idol?

So when Micah said in order to live in faith I needed to leave things behind, I thought about the feather inked on my left arm and the process birds go through to remove their broken wings so that they can fly again. And maybe, just maybe, I need to step out in faith and leave my brokenness behind. Maybe, just maybe, I need to stop living my life so independently and start tearing down some of the walls and depending on other people. This is a scary thought. This would be an act of faith.

It’s easier said than done. And I acknowledge that there is a fine line. We are all broken and we will continue to be broken as long as we live on earth. But we don’t need to dwell in our brokenness. Healing means I have the ability to move on and move away from the past. Healing enables me to live in faith.

When you break a leg, you spend time in a cast, then you go to physical therapy so that you can relearn how to walk. You tend to the leg and treat it with extra care. But eventually your leg heals and you regain muscle and you start running again and it’s almost as if the accident never happened. Emotional wounds aren’t as straight forward, but there is still healing and the ability to move away from them.

In one of my classes this week my professor shared a fascinating fact that the Hebrew language only consist of verbs, no nouns. Everything is always moving and unfolding and performing as God intended. There is no present tense, only past and future. My professor said:

Because we are always verb-ing, we can’t be noun-ed by our past. The noun will impact and affect us but because we are always unfolding it doesn’t stick to us.

It’s almost too profound for me to grasp. As long as we are living in faith, we are continually moving forward. Satan would love for us to stay in our past because that is where things get muddied. We have to keep being, we have to keep verb-ing, we have to keep healing and flying.

So back to last Sunday with Pastor Micah, he ended with this: We need to lay it down so that something else can be born in us.

In order to grow, in order to fly again, I’ve got to lay down my brokenness and move forward in faith into a life of freedom, so that something new can be born in me. Something new. Exactly what I am looking for. And oddly, right now (at this season of my life), that “life of freedom” may very well be a life of dependency.

And as far as the help coming from unexpected places  that would be my good man, Ty Schroeder. He is quite possibly the most surprising aspect of my life thus far. Unanticipated yet exactly who I need. God is allowing and equipping Ty to show me how to acknowledge hurt – even little hurts and minor scrapes from the week; not just the gaping wounds from years gone by– but then to release it, and fly forward in freedom.

So, as the birds fly south toward freedom from the winter, I will stay in the cold and figure out how to fly in freedom. I will discover ways to implement new and thoughtfully release old.