Broken.

I am broken.

I come from a broken past, a broken family, and a long list of broken relationships.

Let me define the context of the term 'broken'. Being broken can mean:
-Being abused.
-Going through a divorce.
- Dealing with depression.
-Ending a relationship.
-Death of a friend, child, sibling, or family member.
-Moving away from home.
I think anything that breaks your spirit and takes a little bit of happiness and joy out of life can be put under the broken category.

The reason I feel the desire to write about being broken is because up until now, I've looked at my broken past with regret and anger. When really, I should be looking at it with gratitude and appreciation for where it  has put me today.

Maybe I should give a quick summary of my own brokeness before I continue.

I come from a mother and father who were not exctly parent material. Simply put, they preferred sex and drugs over raising children, which caused them to get a divorce when I was two. My father could not handle raising two toddlers on his own so my grandparents kept me and my older sister until the age of eight. For two years my father made an attempt to raise us, but when I was ten he met a woman who quickly became our step mother...and she was not interested in her new husband being a package deal.
Her dislike for my sister and I led to three years of moving in with other family members until the failed attempts at finding a relative to take us in led to sticking us into foster homes.

In my childhood I moved into more houses than I can count on both hands, and made and lost more relationships than I care to think about. It is easy to say that I am a broken person, but harder to think about the fact that my brokeness is actually a gift. I think my brokeness reveals something about who I am.

Each of us has suffered in a way no other has. Those spirit breaking moments in our heart are what create our uniqueness. When thinking of how broken humans are I picture a road filled with potholes in my head. That symbolizes our hearts. Every pothole and bump in the road shows how damaged and broken our lives are.

The one wonderful thing about potholes: They can be filled.

Right now, I'm learing that the broken spots in my life are all just places that can be filled with God's over powering grace and love. In a book I'm currently reading called 'The Beloved', the author Nouwen says,

"When we keep listening to attentively to the voice calling us the Beloved, it becomes possible  to live our brokeness, not as a confirmation of our fear that we are worthless, but as an oppurtunity to purify and deepen the blessing that rests upon us...As I grow older, I am more than ever aware of how little as well as how much we can do for others. Yes indeed, we are chosen, blessed, and broken to be given."

Being a broken person, I often ask myself, Why me? Why now? What did I do to deserve this?
And though I don't have the official and perfect answer for these questions, this is what I think. Like Nouwen says, we are broken to be given. To be able to fully give ourselves to God, and others, we have to have some rough and broken edges in our life. How else can we relate to each other?

I am thankful to be broken. Being broken offers a whole new way of sharing life and giving each other hope. What could be more rewarding than that?