Perfect Brokenness

I am writing this as we drive home from our 10-year college reunion.  A weekend spent with friends sharing each other’s stories of the past 10 years. I am guessing that it is not uncommon to go to a reunion like this and for people to put on perfect front about their lives (job, car, marriage, clothes, etc.)  But that was not the case this weekend.  As I reflect on this weekend I am so thankful for transparent stories of real people not perfect people.  Stories of God’s people.  People rejoicing for the way God has worked and continues to work in their lives. 

Each one of our lives is a story … A little over 10 years ago we (The Carlisle's) thought we knew how our story would go…everything seemed perfect!  We were on cloud nine, graduating from college and getting married all within the same month.  We had the perfect idea for what our life together would look like. 

We would get married, never fight with each other, never hurt each other, have all the things this world told us we needed, and live happily ever after, and everything would be perfect!  That was the plan at least…

Then life happened…  it was not completely perfect.  It was real, it was hard, and it was broken.   As the years past, we were not living up to be the perfect people that each of us thought we had married.   We were two broken people continually trying to bandage the wounds and walk around as if life were absolutely perfect.  

The problem is, how do you get up and walk and pretend that life is perfect when you are walking around on two broken legs.

So what if we are not supposed to be perfect?  But instead, perfectly broken?  What if we could rejoice in brokenness because it is these moments we see God’s glory and a piece of us is put back together.

What had happened to our perfect plan?  What happened to our perfect life?  Real life happened.  Human kind happened.  No matter what we do or how hard we try we are not perfect.   We were not made to be perfect.  

We are made to need God.

We realized we were broken people walking around bandaging the wounds, trying to live, pretending everything was perfect and never actually really living at all.  

What if it is in trying to be perfect that we lose out on life? What if the brokenness is what actually brings us life?

There is no such thing as a perfect person.    There is no perfect family, no perfect wife or husband, no perfect parent, no perfect house, no perfect car, no perfect “ ____” (you fill in the blank). There is one perfect thing… A perfect Maker who makes all things new.  One who puts the pieces of our brokenness back together one piece at a time.

So what if we accepted that we were broken? What if we stopped walking around with all of the pain, we choose to take off the bandages, and reveal the wounds so that we could be healed.  What if we choose to see Christ and his story of brokenness and what that means for in our lives so that we can run!  Run to Him!

Each one of our stories began with a broken relationship with a perfect maker.  We are always trying to change our story and make it perfect on our own terms.  But that will never work.  Instead, our creator broke for us.  He sent His son into a broken world, where his body would break and he would die a broken death.  In his brokenness our relationship with him would be restored and made perfect again. 

This was God’s perfect plan.  

Perfect brokenness happened on the cross!

Our story does not require us to be perfect.  

Instead it requires us to let go of perfection. 

To let go of the perfection that our culture tell us we should have.

When we are able to see our brokenness for what is and understand the perfect healer for who He is, we are then free to embrace brokenness in our homes and in our churches because we understand that God broke for his people.   We need to stop hiding the wounds, stop covering them up and letting them fester so that they never heal.  Instead… open the bandage… reveal the wounds

let the body of Christ (the church) nurse them 

and the air of Christ's spirit heal them. 

Our story does not end here though.   In fact it is just the beginning.  There will be a day when the brokenness of this world is completely restored, we will be made perfect, and we will live eternally with the one who broke perfectly for each one of us.  This is His perfect plan!  When we accept that he perfectly broke for us He will make us perfect in Him!