A Fresh Start :: On Brokenness & Restoration

Sitting on the front porch, the spring-like breeze made me forget today was our last day before school starts tomorrow. The kids played in the front yard while I finished editing a friend’s book. A couple guys worked on building us a deck in the back yard. The kids read/browsed books of their own while I soaked in the silence.

We met Greg for lunch at the Thai restaurant of the kids’ choosing to celebrate summer’s end. Honestly, I haven’t felt like celebrating. Summer went too fast. It’s not that there was more I wanted to do, but I want more of what we’ve done. I want more adventures and more afternoons at the pool.

But today has been good for my weary soul.

This summer has been full of fun times – with friends, at amusement parks, on the road, in our front yard, in our pajamas, on the calendar, and in spontaneous moments.

And this summer also has been a time of processing old wounds.

Watching a dear friend walk through a family situation that reminds of my own history that left the deepest scars has brought me to a place I wasn’t expecting. I’d walk through the hard days with this friend over and over again, but I wasn’t emotionally prepared for where her journey would take me. I wasn’t ready for the scabs in my heart to be ripped off. I thought the scars were fading, but I realized this summer they still need to heal.

So today as the spring breeze blew through my last summer day, I typed out some words I’ve held inside for decades. A relationship that plagued me when I was 8 is still haunting me at 35 years old. Through my husband’s encouragement, my friends’ support, and God’s grace, I’ve realized I need to forgive. The anger I’ve held onto for so long has overflowed into my life as a wife, mom, daughter, sister, aunt, and friend. The bitterness has robbed me of the joy and peace God wants me to know.

I get the sense there’s freedom on the other side.

Yes, the kids will go back to school tomorrow. But our adventures don’t end here. Hopefully I’ll get to the point of forgiveness sooner rather than later. Because that’s just the beginning of whatever God has for me next.

“I don’t want to get so stressed about bedtime this year,” I told Greg at lunch while my kids listened. They all knew what I meant because they’ve regularly witnessed by nagging, rushing of putting the kids away because I’m often tired by daylight’s end. Really, I’m weary from the inside out.

Bedtime sounds minor, but it’s in the ordinary moments I’m realizing God is continuing a work he started long ago. And it’s here in the process of getting to the other side of forgiveness that I’ve learned only through brokenness does God have a chance to restore.

“Become broken and poured out for hopeless people. Become a living offering, denying yourself for the salvation and restoration of humanity. …

Doesn’t this concept of being broken for others ring true? It’s a spiritual dynamic that bears out physically. Why is it so exhausting to uphold someone’s heavy, inconvenient burden? Why are we spent from shouldering someone’s grief or being an armor bearer? Why is it that lifting someone out of his or her rubble leaves us breathless? Because we are the body of Christ, broken and poured out, just as He was. 

Mercy has a cost: someone must be broken for someone else to be fed. The sermon changed your life? That messenger was poured out so you could hear it. The friends who stood in the gap during your crisis? They embraced some sacrifice of brokenness for your healing.” 

{Jen Hatmaker in “Interrupted: When Jesus Wrecks Your Comfortable Christianity”}

It doesn’t feel like summer anymore – both with this relief in humidity and the school calendar looming. But I want to hold onto a summer mentality that recognizes one more book, an extra song, or an adventure that stretches beyond 7:30 p.m. is okay. More importantly, I want to remember what God’s taught me this summer: Our brokenness can feed each other and give God a chance to make us new.

Perhaps a fresh start with the new school year won’t be so bad after all.
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I'm sharing this post with link-ups at Jen Ferguson's Soli Deo Gloria Sisterhood Gathering, Holley Gerth's Coffee for Your Heart, Beth Stiff's Three Word Wednesday, and Jennifer Dukes Lee's #TellHisStory. 

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