A Broken Repairer

Gloomy-grey hangs outside as much-needed raindrops fall from moisture-laden skies. Drops sit on leaves now dying and I'm thinking of how the conversation still keeps ringing in my mind. Who would have thought that another's pain could release my own? 

A friend tells me honest doubting, the searching for goodness amidst the ruins of a dream now dead. Of the battling to keep saying "yes" to God when you feel like you've been denied. Of how to reconcile all the work you put in with the results you never expected or wanted. Of how to accept the hidden providence of God when it seems He has smiled with success on others but given you nothing but hardship. And I feel the heart still aching for answers. I feel a life still crying out for a purpose to all this pain. But somehow this soul-spilling is so vulnerable that it's almost beautiful in the most broken way. It's drawing me out in a way that's surprising. 

Who would have guessed that my grief could be soothed by the grief of another? Yet isn't the greatest cure for one's own pain to enter the pain of another and say, "Me too?" 

Days later, I am on a plane headed home. As jet engines whir, I leak from tear-filled eyes and I think of all the days I've cried in recent weeks. Emotion has seeped out of me to the point where I'm not sure I have any tears left to shed. Mountains sprawl down below, and I'm left thinking of this moment in time where soul touched soul on a mountain trail and somehow I'm feeling a bit healed. I had hardly expected that. Would not have guessed that God would meet me in a holy space through the transparency of another hurting soul. The burden of grief feels like it's eased just slightly. As the tears crawl down my tired face, a cleansing is happening. Something I realize only love can do. 

Upon arriving home, days string into days but somehow my pattern of grieving has been broken a bit. And I'm not sure if that's good or bad. I ask myself if I'm just running to escape or if something has indeed changed since I left to travel. The more time I'm back, the more I realize a healing of sorts has occurred. There is still an underlying sadness but the fact that I could absorb my grief in the seemingly greater pain of a friend seemed to lessen the impact of my personal loss. The fact that each could air out their struggles proved that the wounded have the power to help heal one another. That confession brings about mending. And I'm feeling this stitching-up happening in the aftermath.

I get a text from Alex's dad, asking for my help with a project. Asking me to assist him with something he wants to do to honor his son. He who has struggled to figure out to share his son's story now turns to me who is passionate about remembering and requests I come along because it's time others know. As I give the better part of a day to helping fulfill his request, I'm left wondering why I've spent so much of my life in the broken places. Hard and empty spaces seem to be where God sends me the most, and I'm discovering a sort of life-meaning through this loss that just might give me reasons for much of what I've endured in my life. 

Just maybe the very thing I've struggled to make peace with...the very thing I've tried to avoid and run from...the very thing I've most been afraid to face...perhaps it is at that exact point that God's actual mission for my life is being fulfilled. For so long I've been embarrassed to tell my story, thinking others would not accept someone whose life has been broken but maybe God is again reminding me that the broken way is His way. That He does not need a whole heart to go into the dark and hurting places but rather a mended heart. A heart that knows what its like to ache. And perhaps I've been accomplishing more by merely showing up and choosing to love large with a broken heart than I could have hoped to do with a heart that had never lost, have never known sorrow. Had never suffered. 

It's late one night, and I'm struggling through the pain of an excruciating backache. Muscles spasm on repeat, and I'm trying my best to sleep but all is quivering, and I'm about at my whit's end. Days of pain that have yet to let up. I've always held in the tension, never let it out. How can I make myself relax into trust and learn to believe when fear is my default? 

Reading the words of the one author whose story set my own writing free, she points back to a passage in Isaiah and the scripture prayed, blessed over me by my parents at my high school graduation comes to mind. I haven't thought of this verse in some time. I recite it to myself from memory and let the words sink in...

"And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places;

thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations, and

thou shalt be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer 

of paths to dwell in."

- (Isaiah 58:12)

When my parents first chose this verse to place on my diploma, I recall thinking at the time that this was a promise that I'd change the world through what I knew. Would take my unique education and would help people get in touch with their history, their truth. Building "old waste places" to me meant fixing culture. "Raising up the foundations" meant setting people's thinking straight. What I didn't realize at the time was how much needed to be set straight inside of me. A few weeks later, I would find myself at my father's bedside, questioning everything I knew and believed. It was the beginning of a journey that is still shaping me today. 

Letting those words now run over my tongue and sink into my soul, I suddenly realize that this verse was prophetic on what my life-mission would become...just not in the way I once thought. God has, indeed, sent me to the waste places. Has sent me to the wasteland of the human heart to learn about how to find abundance in the wilderness. And I'm now seeing that I've been able to help repair the cracked places because I myself have been broken. I have been called to restore with love, to help call others back to the love of the Father. To be the voice for the voiceless. To the one to articulate the pains of the soul for those who are too weak to speak for themselves. To use the gift of words to restore the paths of life-giving grace. 

And all the times I've felt I was only speaking out my own pain perhaps I was actually fulfilling my mission by unintentionally expressing the pain of many? And just maybe a wounded one, a broken one can be the healing one because Grace has allowed them to make the valley of tears into a well? 

I'm drawn back to that conversation awhile back. Friend and I trekking along wilderness together, a picture of life's journey for both of us in the barren places of the heart. Perhaps why I'm feeling a bit strengthened, a bit healed is because God allowed each's pain to touch the soul of the other. Caused the raw honesty of one to help the other not feel so alone. Reminded both to keep choosing the brave way, even though it hurts. And we became closer. 

My friend is still seeking faith to trust in a good God even when what God gives appears ugly. I'm still coping with the loss of Alex, dreams still waking me up, silence not answered as I find my mind still searching for one who is no longer here. The pain hasn't left either of us. But neither has God left us either. And somehow, on a backwoods trail, Grace found us both.