Beauty in the Brokenness

Beauty in the Brokenness

Since my last post several weeks ago there has been a great sense of relief in my life. I no longer carry this burden that no one knows about, I share these emotions and feelings more freely and I don’t feel as alone. But in spite of all of this, I still struggle. I still cannot tell people how I am truly feeling. If someone asks me how I am doing I still always say “fine” or “ok” or “good” and everyone believes me. No one holds me to a real answer, asking why I’m fine or what’s going on or if I’m REALLY fine. I thought about this yesterday and even discussed it with a couple of people and we decided that a) we don’t really want most people to know how we really are, the aspects of our lives that they really care about really are fine, and b) most people don’t really want to know, they ask out of courtesy and don’t expect more than a one word answer. I mean, if I would have explained to Marjorie Krause that, “I’m alive, and that’s good enough for today,” she probably wouldn’t have known what to say. And why should she know, is it really that important for people outside of our families and close friends to know how we really are? I would make the case that it is, at least for most people, because even though they don’t expect a real answer, they would be willing to listen to one. If they care enough to ask then I would say that they deserve a real answer, even though I never really give one.
Now that I’m done with that random rant, the main purpose of this post is to explain my last week or so. Last week was rough for me. Starting on Sunday, things didn’t really go like I wanted them to. One specific incident sticks out but it’s not important, you can ask if you want to know, and I was feeling alone again. The meds didn’t feel like they were working, I was easily irritated, especially when playing basketball (out of character for something that was supposed to be a release for me) and I was feeling overwhelmed by classes.
Within all this madness, there were four times that I felt comfort, and three of them came from one person. First, at the start of the week, I had a meeting that, to be honest, I didn’t really want to go to, but this friend offered a reflection at the beginning that stood out to me. She said that she had been fasting that day and during that time she thought about the mistakes we make and how we always come back to the same things. At first she felt disheartened but after thinking about it more she realized that even though we make the same mistakes, they aren’t quite the same and each time we get a little closer to where we want to be. This really resonated with me because I feel as though I keep making the same mistakes time after time, but I now I know to look for where they are getting smaller and I’m getting closer to where I want to be.
Second, on Friday I had another meeting that started off with another reflection by the same friend. This time she talked about how we can get in a rut and like I talked about earlier, when telling others how we are we don’t always tell the truth. At this point I can’t remember exactly what she said but it was something that I needed to hear that day.
Third, this same friend just read my blog post Friday night and Saturday morning she delivered a handwritten seven page letter, offering words of comfort, reassurance, and understanding. Several things from this letter stuck out to me. She encouraged me to take my struggles to God, but not in the way of prayer. She told me that sometimes you have to yell at God before you can pray to God. She gave me two passages from the Psalms that are angry and lamenting and I was surprised at the emotion,
“I am weary with mourning;
every night I flood my bed with tears;
I drench my couch with my weeping.
My eyes waste away because of grief” Psalm 6:6-7
Finally, she offered me these words “There can still be so much beauty in the broken.” I don’t really have a reflection on this phrase because I don’t know where to begin when processing it, but I know that it stood out to me the most.
The final event of the week was by far the most powerful and is really the reason for this post, sorry it took so long to get here. Sunday I went to Lorraine for church, excited to see the Harders but still feeling a little off, not quite right. I didn’t know that anything special was going to happen during the service, but I was wrong. It felt just like any other service, I wasn’t paying too close of attention, kind of in my own little world, lost in thought, until Lois got up for her sermon. I tuned in for the first bit but after she finished talking about Tiger Woods I couldn’t help myself and I began to slip back into my own thoughts. But something she said caught my attention. She talked of a friend who was anxious and not content with his life. How he experienced “deep darkness and doubts” and how “These are horrible, frightening storms for him.” I listened more carefully throughout the rest of the sermon, wondering if I had heard right. The person she described sounded an awful lot like me. She went on to say how we have painful and trying times in our lives, and than Lent is a reminded or those times, the most difficult and painful, and how those times can also be the times when we can give ourselves to “the most humbly and completely to the mission of God’s love.” By the time she was done, I was completely numb. Never before had a sermon spoken such a powerful message to me. I didn’t know how to react. We sang a hymn and then the choir sang a song, to invite us to communion, and I lost control. The tears began to flow and I didn’t want them to stop. I wasn’t crying as much when I got up to take communion but then Lois looked me in the eye and said, “Receive the sheltering love of God.” I made it back to my seat and leaned forward and I cried for the rest of the service. Every time I heard Tom and Lois say those words I felt safe. It was at this point in the service that I felt something that I have never even come close to before. I am a very skeptical person when it comes to people claiming that they encountered God. Saying that they could hear God or feel God’s presence, so it might surprise some of you who know me better to hear this. I felt God there, holding me, I could feel God’s arms around me, holding me in a way that was gentle and protective, reassuring me that I was love and safe. I felt the sheltering love of God in a way that I did not know was possible. I have never felt so safe and loved in my entire life. There is no doubt in my mind that if things hadn’t been exactly as they were the past several months I would not have had this experience. If I had not been as vulnerable, stretched, desperate, I would not have been open enough to feel that presence there with me, holding me.
To wrap up this post I’d like to talk about a song that I’ve been listening to a lot the past couple of weeks. It has kind of become my theme song and it speaks to what I feel. The song is “Dear God” by FM Static. It starts off, “Dear God I wrote this letter, to put my thoughts on paper.” It feels like I’ve been writing my thoughts and feelings down more lately because I thought it would help me to understand what I was going through. The song really gets to the point the first time through the chorus when the lyrics read, “I don't know, but i got this feeling,
that today's gonna be my turning point, Everyday I get a little bit closer, it feels so good to finally be over I don't know, but I think I'm learning, This type of thing’s, never been my calling card, sometimes you just gotta look closer, instead of searchin' so hard.”


There has been at least one point every day for the past two weeks that I’ve listened to this song and felt like it was true. Even if I had a terrible day, I would listen to this song at the end of the day and I would believe it. I don’t know when the actual turning point was, maybe it hasn’t come yet, but I also think that it could have been the first time I heard the song, and that it has happened so slowly that I couldn’t tell that it happened. Whatever it was, this song has helped me get there.

Finally, I have received so many responses from family and close friends to my last post, all of them unique and individual in their own way, but there was one thing that was common to several, the phrase “With hope.” I don’t know where this came from or what possessed you all to say it, but thank-you from the bottom of my heart, thank-you for hoping for me, when I couldn’t hope myself.

Peace and Love,
Daniel