I think it probably started off broken. I know it was over two days of a labor of love, constant pain and effort. A little bit of drama and questioning of WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE SO HARD. Ending with a cry of relief and fear. If I could time travel, I think that’s where I would go…to see my mom in that moment I was born. But I don’t have to do that to know there was a lot of insecurity…a lot of fear…a lot of what in the world do we do with this creature we just made? So it probably started off broken.
My ostentatious entry into the world was a beginning, not just of my life, but of this painful passage through my presence on this broken planet. It was the beginning of my own fear and insecurity. A feeling of always being the sore thumb that awkwardly sticks out in every situation ever. An entry into drama and feelings and being too much and not being enough. It was the start of a huge cavernous dark hole that I would fill with everything except what would actually heal it. That was definitely there from the beginning. It definitely started off broken.
And so of course, the pieces chipped of easily. Parts fell off when my sweet precious daddy would innocently say “good, but not good enough”…or when it felt like he looked right past me and didn’t know me at all…or when I desperately needed to communicate THIS IS WHO I AM to him and I was constantly choked up by my own tears. Not really ever communicating and being furious that I didn’t.
Parts fell away with every step my mom took to distance herself from me. Pieces broke as she was desperately and unmistakably terrified of parenting, of confrontation, of instruction, of interaction.
Sections split wide open as we laughed and danced and joked but never really quite connected.
The worst is when I started trying to fix it myself. Gathering up the pieces as they fell…filling that hole with fake love, false truth, blind trust. SO scared of the broken pieces. SO scared they wouldn’t fit back together right and someone would SEE. They would see the cracks. See the mistakes. See the effort. Why was it so hard to keep the pieces together?
SO here I am, collecting the pieces of my heart. Piecing them back together…willing it to all just stay put in the right places. Applying pressure so it sticks. The whole is willing the pieces to stay together. There’s no repair here…there’s no problem…push it all together and make it seem like the pieces aren’t broken. Look pretty and dainty and gentle. Look meek and kind and proper. Until abruptly…surprisingly…without warning. I’m DONE. Let the pieces fall. Let them break and shatter. Let it all go to hell. This person I started off as is an impossible ending. There’s no way to remain that girl and also be the woman I want to become. The girl is broken. I will not stay broken. I will not try to make the pieces fit. I WILL take all the pieces of everything that I am and will be and I will make it new.
It definitely started off broken, cracked, unrepairable. But that was the point. It was never meant to be pieced back together as it came out. It was never meant to desperately be held together. It was meant to be shattered, busted open, fractured. It was meant to be compassionately gathered up by the Father who sees me and knows me deeply. It was meant to be imparted by the Mother who equips me. It was meant to be wrapped up in love and cocooned in Grace until it metamorphosed into something completely brand new. Beautiful broken pieces that look nothing like how it all started, but are absolutely, undoubtedly, undeniably me.
This Red Tent woman has requested to remain anonymous. We applaud her courage to risk sharing this part of her story with our community, it is our privilege to honor and protect her identity.
Dear one, thank for the beauty of your words to my soul this morning. They remind me of 2 Corinthians 4:7… but we have this treasure in jars of clay… I too often feel the haunt of my brokenness and forget the treasure within. Thank you for your kind reminder.
Beautifully written.❤️
to be granted life in this world means one must be intimately acquainted with brokenness. Along with all the pain, insecurity and heartache it brings. However, as the author so wonderfully points out, to those of us who believe …brokenness no longer defines us. The Father’s Life does! Wonderfully exuberant abundant forever Life! A Life which establishes us as amazingly and completely brand new creatures!
And, as the author’s tone conveys, it takes unfaltering courage and determined confidence to live wholly new and strong in a world which itself remains fractured. May we all earnestly seek to encourage one another to wrap our souls deeply in the Father’s grace reveling in the grand wholeness only His Life provides.
(Becoming Real) takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
Thank you for sharing your story.
I applaud your courage my writing sister. I was broken for many years, also but recently wrote a four part series that may help you find the healing God provided me. https://kathryneleach.com/2017/11/10/blessed-are-the-cracked-finding-emotional-wellness-part-1/