Beautifully broken.

It's that place of brokenness that we all dread. 
When you hit the dead end. 
When you fall to the cold ground. 
When you wake up someone unfamiliar.
When your whole world falls apart. 

But brokenness is beautiful. Because how can we be healed if we're not broken?
How can we be found if we're not lost?

Brokenness is beautiful, because that's when God puts you back together. 
He will allow us to be broken, so He can show His almighty love by picking up the pieces. 
He will pick up the pieces and put us back together as a new creation. 


We should want to be broken. We should want to be weak. We should want to be anything other than unbreakable. 
Because in our brokenness and weakness, God's healing and strength is radiantly revealed. 

He will not waste the pain. He will remedy and heal until you know that it's only because of His great love, only by His abundant grace, and all for His glory. 



Blessed are the lost, for they will be found. 
And blessed are the broken, for they will be healed. Matthew 5 (paraphrased by Morgan).


Brokenness is beautiful, because it leads to surrender.
Surrender is beautiful because it leads to healing. 
And healing, because it leads to praise. 

The innards of my being.

The innocence of a child.
The wisdom in wrinkles of old age.
The joy in the song of the birds. The sorrow in a voice.
Someone's unspoken pain.
The courage and strength in a victory.
Injustice.
The beauty seeping out of a person's heart.
Mistakes made by loved ones.
The passion in my soul.
When I want to help, but I just can't.
Grace.
My undeserved salvation.
And the adventure of this dynamic life
make me cry.
And I love it.

It's no coincidence.

It's no coincidence that the very love we long, thirst, and search for, the love that can't be found anywhere else, is the very love of God.


It's not by chance that the hole inside each of us can only be filled and satisfied by Jesus.


We were created to need our Creator. 
We were created to have a desire for love. 
God created us that way on purpose.
So that we would search and search and find that He is the love we so desperately desire.
So that we would find Jesus is the puzzle piece that fits perfectly inside each of us. 


We were created empty so that we could have the joy of being filled to the fullest by Him. 


And it's no mystery that we have that emptiness,
we have that need for true love. 
There's no question that everything apart from Christ brings only temporary satisfaction. 


It's no coincidence. 

The great compromise

It's funny how willing we are to compromise absolutely everything, for absolutely nothing.

Why?

Maybe it's the thrill.
Maybe it's the chance of it turning out differently than it has every other time.
Maybe we're just stupid.
Maybe we don't care.

Shouldn't we know better than to take a risk knowing the outcome?

Why do we run to edges of cliffs and jump, thinking maybe this time I'll fly?

Why do we walk down paths marked with signs that say danger and dead end?

We foolishly think that we're different. This time is different. We're strong enough, we're smart enough, we're dedicated enough.

But we're not.

We're human.

We're weak and searching for a source of strength.

Undefined, no.II

Do not let yourself be defined by the weaknesses of your flesh.

Do not let yourself be defined by the boundaries of this world.

Do not let yourself be defined by the selfishness of humanity.

Do not limit yourself by labels.

Do not let anyone tell you who you are or who you're supposed to be.

Do not let yourself be contained inside an opinion.

Do not let yourself flow with the standards of our shallow society. 

Find who you are apart from anyone or anything telling you who to be.  

"We must not allow other people's limited perceptions to define us."

Virginia Satir 

Leap Year

So, it's February 29th. That's cool. Cause it only happens every 4 years.


And I couldn't help but wonder who I'll be on the next leap year.


A lot can happen in 4 years. A lot. I could be in a foreign country (hopefully) for all I know.
I could be married (hopefully not).
I could be still going to school, grad school, or some other school.
I could be pursuing my career. 
I could be a mom!


I don't know!


But, I'm so excited to find out. 


I can't wait to see who I am, where I am, who I'm with, all I've done, all I've learned on February 29, 2016. 

The pits.

We live on a path.


And sometimes we choose to step off of this path.
Out of curiosity, maybe rebellion, or because the grass seems greener over there.


Without any marked trail to follow we misstep, stumble, and fall.


That's okay, as long as we get back up, and realize that we should probably follow our bread crumb trail back to the path.


But sometimes we fall in holes. Or pits.


Those falls are hard, and fast.
And the pits are deep, dark, and cold.


All our strength is gone from trudging through the wilderness so we're tired and weak. And we wanna just lay there for a while on the nice cold ground. A break from searching. A break from walking.


Then, once we start to feel the pain of our broken bones, and the hardness of the ground, we wonder how we got there in the first place.
It seems like we just took a brief scenic route, so how did it lead here?


It never takes too long to lose yourself. And you don't realize you've wandered...until you're lost.
Until you're lying, broken, on the cold floor of that deep pit, do you realize the steps you took to get there.


And so you start to climb out, ironically, healing on the way.


And it takes a while.


But it's worth it.


Because once your face is warmed again by the sun, and your weary feet touch the soft green grass, you'll look back and be grateful. 


Grateful for what you learned and grateful for the grace you were given to climb out.




And you'll never go back.

What do you do when...

The one thing that you know you want is potentially not meant to be?
When you've spent years planning your life around a dream that has ended up being unfulfilling and dissatisfying?
When you feel like you're not on the path you're supposed to be on?
When you want too many things, but you can't have it all?
When you know what you want, but you have no idea how to go about in getting it?
What do you do?


You don't do anything. 
You stop.
You take a deep breath.
You remember that life is out of control no matter how much you try to control it.
You acknowledge your flawed way of thinking when you try to take life by the reins.
You realize that there's no possible way to plan every last detail. 




You take one moment at a time, one breath at a time, one step at a time, and trust that everything is going to work out just fine. 


Because it's never going to work out the way we plan anyway. And that's okay, because the things that are most satisfying, that come from walking blindly forward, exceed everything we could possibly imagine or dream.

Morse Code

You know that feeling... 
when your heart rate increases, and you start breathing heavier.


Each beat of your heart feels like it's trying to break out of your chest. 


It hurts because it's longing for something. It's crying for something it can't have, but at the same time it feels content. 
It's craving something, but you don't know what.
  
Like something is tugging at it, urging it to leap out of your body but all you feel is the painful fact that it's stuck there.

Imprisoned, containing only the ability to do human things like pump blood through your veins and deliver oxygen to your organs. 
It's defined by boundaries instead of doing what it wants to do--beat freely. 


It's like you're grasping for air that you can't quite reach. 
Your lungs are collapsing and no matter how deep your breaths, your heart is not satisfied with the shallowness of the flesh that detains it.


It can't beat through electric impulses alone. 
Often it forgets it's true desire and just sustains the life it was given responsibility of. But it needs more. It needs to be fed. It needs to love. 
It needs to somehow tell the body that it wasn't only made for these menial tasks. 


So it beats faster. 
It requires more oxygen. 
It tries to jump out of the rib cage that hides it from the world just to get your attention; to make you listen to the message hidden like Morse Code in the beats that you ignore daily. 






Your heart is telling you something. Listen. 

Wow

Life is beautiful.
Humanity is beautiful.
Struggle is beautiful.


Because God's love, 
                                grace,
                                           passion,
                                                           power,
                                                                       and purpose

radiates fantastically through it all.

Unfathomable

If God can be understood, defined, achieved, comprehended, or even the least bit fathomed,
it's not God.

"I can no more understand the totality of God than the pancake I made for breakfast understands the complexity of me." 

Donald Miller

Guard your heart above all else, for it is the source of life.

The heart is such a strange organ. 
It beats. It feels. It attaches. It breaks. It heals. It gives life. 
It's so valuable, and we flaunt it with our chest wide open for the world to see. Hearts change. Hearts harden. Hearts are meant to be guarded, they weren't made to be broken. 


I think there comes a time in everyone's life when you decide to stop letting people hurt you. You decide that you don't deserve to be lied to, manipulated, used, and betrayed. You realize that sometimes you have the right to be selfish in relationships.
And you realize that love shouldn't hurt. 


People come and go. People leave marks on your heart, and sometimes just take the whole thing right out of you. People influence people. People hurt people. 


The heart can be a very dangerous weapon, or it can be the most effective tool.  


Our hearts were made to love... if only we knew how. 

Thank you, thank you very much.

I wish every day was Thanksgiving.


Not the food, and the football aspect of Thanksgiving, but the actual thanks giving part.


It's ridiculous that only one day a year is dedicated to acknowledging our over abundance of things. And even then, we've turned it into something superficial. 


I wish we would just take a minute or two out of our daily superficial and abundant lives to think about how truly blessed we are. 

Never too late to start over.

I lost myself. For a very long time. For a major part of my life.
For the time that I most needed to find myself, I was lost. 


I don't remember that person I grew up with. She seems so different, like a stranger.


And now, I'm starting over. I'm defining myself the best way I know how from scratch. I'm paying attention and creating for myself a definition to stick to, a character that will not be altered by anyone or anything. 


I'm walking down this path in front of me, picking up bits and pieces along the way, to figure out who I am and who I want to be. I'm finding my identity all over again because I never found it in the right place. It was always in someone else. 


So... I am what I am and that's all that I am. And once I figure out who that is, that's all I'm going to be. 

To learn, to love, to serve

My purpose in life. One, no more important than the other.

?

I love people that ask a lot of questions. 


Because you don't always know the answer until the question is asked. Even the simplest of questions can reveal your deepest desires, needs, and values. 



Even if the answer is "I don't know", you're on your way to knowing. 

And then you learn something about yourself. 

Judge not, lest you shall be judged.

What makes us do the things we do?
What makes us say the things we say?
What makes us believe the things we believe?




A person's character is made up of so much more than could possibly meet our shallow eyes. 




I despise judgement.

Processing

Everything is a process. Everything takes time. 
Nothing happens over night. 


I'm in transit. I'm processing. 


I'm in the process of healing.
I'm in the process of moving on.
I'm in the process of acceptance.
I'm in the process of placing my value in Christ.
I'm in the process of surrender.
I'm in the process of learning.
I'm in the process of letting go.


And I'm feeling pretty optimistic. Even though I haven't reached the end, at least I'm on my way. 
One wrong turn can reverse all my progress. One emotional day can make me forget everything I've learned.  


I'm processing, going through all the steps and all the stages. 


And it's about time.

Nothing's ever as it seems.

The sooner I realize that, the happier I will be. I can stop expecting things to be the way I see and feel them to be and expect to be constantly surprised. 

There's always an ulterior motive, or a hidden emotion, or a silver lining. And that's always how it's always going to be. The universe and all it's laws don't change. God and His promises don't change. People and their human nature don't change. 

It's me that's got to change. It's my surrounding that have got to change. It's me that's got to adapt to my surroundings and learn how to function and flourish in them.

There are so many things I've yet to realize about myself and about this world I live in. I've got to open my eyes because nothing is what I think it is. Nothing is going to change or adapt to me...it's going to change no matter what, and I'm the one that has to adapt.

And change is good. Change makes me learn. It's the one thing in life that I can count on not changing, besides God, of course.

Accept it. Learn from it. And let the change, change you in all the ways it needs to. 

Because change is inevitable. And nothing is ever as it seems. 

Scars

Why is it so much fun to pick a scab?


Why can't we just let the wound heal instead of repeatedly reopening it, leaving a larger scar than we would have had before?