I got angry today. Quite angry, and hung out with it for quite awhile, most of the day, in fact.
I started the day out with great intentions, before I even got out of bed I was ready to embrace this day, and to be a mom full of love. Winter break is almost over and come Monday they will head back to school–already?
My thoughts have been on how short this life is, and how quickly the years go by. God is so great to give us new seasons, new beginnings, new mercies and new years. At the beginning of this new day that God has granted, I was so full motivation and determination to embrace this beautiful gift of a day.
And then, the bickering began. Little voices full of selfishness, little hearts that did not want to share, little lives experiencing how fallen we are and how much we need help, need a Savior. Did I see them in this light, in that moment? No. Nada. Nope.
My own selfishness, my own unwillingness to share my time to teach, my own fallenness came so quickly, too quickly. I refused to admit my need for help, my need for a Savior. Instead, I listened to lies from self, telling me I deserved more, telling me I had reason for the self pity I was starting to drown in, telling me that I am alone. Then– I got angry, and then I got angry that I was angry, then I tried to blame others for my anger, and then I blamed myself. I went inward, I chose to entertain untruths, I shrunk under the fingers of self, pointing, accusing and harsh, and I had a crap day because of it.
Then, God showed me how amazingly merciful and full of grace He is.
He wrapped Himself around me through the words of a beautiful writer. Her post title caught my eye.
“The Broken Beloved”
My name, Amy, means beloved. The title intrigued me. Today I felt broken..very broken, but not beloved. How do I so quickly forget this? How quickly do I forget that the breaks do not define me? How quickly do I forget that I know the Ultimate Healer?
You must
click here and read the whole post. I loved the paragraph toward the end that answers the question,
“How does a broken mother parent in a home of brokenness?“I also loved this, and so relate to her thoughts:
I’ve tried to fix me, endlessly, oiled perfection slipping impossibly through these fingers. So it is: “I am like a broken vessel” (Ps. 31:12).
Nor can determined efforts completely repair the glaring cracks and chips of the damaged children and spouses who brush against the wounded self. I know that too. The bandages of manipulation, the splints of control, the casts of anger have healed little and hurt more. We live the pain of bruised souls pressed close.
I weary of it. This array of days broken, to various and sundry degrees, with sloth, squabbles and selfishness, inflicts its own pain.
Can’t we just be well and whole?
And in the groans of our cumulative woundedness, comes the whisper, “You are my beloved. My Broken Beloved. My Beloved Broken.”
It’s all okay.
This brokenness. This cracked life. This damaged family. Yes, we are broken, but not discarded; cracked, but not rejected; damaged, but not junked. We are the broken. And yet we are, incomprehensibly, unfathomably,
the beloved.
And this:
“And so a mother patterns her life after her Lord’s: she knows she is taken, chosen and called. Yes, she is the beloved, openly soaking in His blessings showered upon her. Yet she accepts her life as broken, cracked. So she gives, pouring out through the fractures, for she knows, painfully so, what it is to be broken.”
Isn’t her style of writing beautiful? I am so glad I found her, and I so glad truth found me through her words.
I am Broken. I am Beloved.
