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by
Laura Story
MYTH: I MUST WORK TO KEEP MY DREAMS ALIVE. TRUTH: I CAN REST WHEN I RELEASE MY DREAMS TO THE HANDS OF MY LOVING FATHER.
We pray for blessings, we pray for peace Comfort for family, protection while we sleep We pray for healing, for prosperity We pray for your mighty hand to ease our suffering All along, you hear each spoken need Yet love us way too much to give us lesser things
’Cause what if your blessings come through raindrops? What if your healing comes through tears?
What if a thousand sleepless nights Are what it takes to know you’re near? What if trials of this life Are your mercies in disguise?
We pray for wisdom, your voice to hear We cry in anger when we cannot feel you near We doubt your goodness, we doubt your love As if every promise from your Word is not enough And all the while, you hear each desperate plea And long that we’d have faith to believe
And as lame as it sounds, I was so filled with hope by the idea that other people who love Jesus more than me and obey better than me ask the same questions and have the same struggles.”
Didi is right about many of us asking the same questions and having the same struggles. I discovered that God loves using broken people and broken things.
When friends betray us, when darkness seems to win We know that pain reminds this heart That this is not, this is not our home It’s not our home
It seems that for so many of us going through trials, the unexpected ones are the hardest, but they are also the times we need God the most. “When we know something is coming, we can get prayed up for it,” Charlene wrote. “When things catch me off guard, I kind of go into a controlled panic mode where I feel nothing and just try to get through.”
What if my greatest disappointments Or the aching of this life Is the revealing of a greater thirst This world can’t satisfy? And what if trials of this life The rain, the storms, the hardest nights Are your mercies in disguise?
It’s a hard truth to hear that our circumstances might not change and God might not fix the broken things in our lives. But I know personally that even when our situation doesn’t change for the better, we can change for the better.
And he has used it, not because we were special, or famous, or even great examples of people experiencing brokenness in a way that God approved of. I believe he used our story for the same reason he uses others’ stories: because we were willing for him to use it. And in our weakness, we were willing to give him the glory.
I believe he wants to do the same for you through your broken story too.
Each of us is broken in different ways. Our trials and our circumstances are unique. What we have to individually figure out is what it looks like for us to get better even when our circumstances don’t. Now, before you get frustrated that you’ve shelled out money for this book and spent hours of your time reading this far only to find out that I don’t have all of the answers, let me explain. We’re never going to have all of the answers this side of heaven. The Bible doesn’t promise us that. God doesn’t promise us that.
Disabilities don’t cause relationships to fall apart; it’s how our sin manifests itself in that disability setting. But as long as we blamed all of our problems on something that was broken and couldn’t be fixed, we didn’t have to deal with the problems.
To be better in our brokenness isn’t to remove the brokenness; it’s to remove the selfishness, pride, impatience, or other sinful behaviors we blame on the brokenness. When we stop blaming our situation on the brokenness, we begin to see that the brokenness is a trial designed specifically for us.
Many caretakers don’t feel appreciated. They feel unloved. They work so hard to care for someone but feel disrespected. When I point them to Scripture, they often feel like the Bible is another rule book they can never live up to. They think the reason this hard thing is happening to them is because they have failed God in some way—they didn’t pray enough, read enough Scripture, serve enough, or have morning quiet times. It’s a lie that I mentioned earlier because I once believed it too.
In Scripture, we see that, despite their circumstances, the people who follow Jesus consistently demonstrate love. They have joy and a tremendous passion for life, which is something we all want. To have a better broken, we need to reconcile that those two things can happen simultaneously—we can face trials, and we can still have joy. Joy doesn’t come from our circumstances; it comes from our God. And since God is with us during our trials, it is possible to have joy even in our trials. Joy is in the Lord. Brokenness is in the world. As long as we’re alive, both will coexist on earth.
Paul wrote, “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness’ ” (v. 9). It’s an astonishing answer. God said to Paul, and therefore, perhaps to all of us, “I’m going to leave your brokenness there, and I’m not going to fix it, because my grace is enough for you. Not only that, but my power is perfected when you can’t do anything to get rid of it yourself.”
Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (vv. 9–10)
That doesn’t mean we pretend as if we like what is happening to us. It’s just that we acknowledge God is God and we are not. Even in the midst of our unchanging circumstances, we can still give him praise and glory. We can still tell others how frail and weak we are, while saying how strong our God remains. We can be content and even find joy in our tragedy, not because we will ourselves to be or we have some kind of extraordinary mastery over our feelings.
While our broken circumstances may not change, we can. We do this by clinging to Scripture, discovering who God truly is, being willing to share our story even in the trials, and looking for blessings in our brokenness.
We are all broken, but we can have a better story. And a better story begins with using our brokenness.
As I looked at the other moms coming in and out of the bathroom with cute clothes, matching jewelry, and manicures, I couldn’t even wrap my head around how they all looked so put together. But that is when I had a realization: I am so thankful God has not called me to a tidy, well-put-together life for the glory of Laura. Instead, he has called me to this messy, unmanageable, and totally dependent on him life for the glory of God.
I’ve been doing all that I can To hold it all together Piece by piece. I’ve been feeling like a failure, Trying to be braver Than I could ever be. It’s just not me. So be my healer, be my comfort, be my peace. Cause I can be broken, I can be needy, Lord I need you now to be, Be my God, so I can just be me. So be my father, my mighty warrior, be my king. Cause I can be scattered, frail and shattered, Lord I need you now to be, Be my God, so I can just be me. And be my savior, be my lifeline, won’t you be my everything. Cause I’m so tired of trying to be someone I was never meant to be Be my God
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As you’ve read my story and compared yours to mine, maybe your story is harder or maybe it’s easier. But whatever it is, I encourage you to cling to Scripture because that and laughter is what will get you through.
We’re all just a phone call away. And when we get that unexpected phone call, we think life as we know it is over. But life as we’ve yet to know it and how God might use it has just begun. Share your story. Give God the glory. And live a better broken.
