“Why even do this? Why go through with it?”
Have you ever asked yourself that question? It is usually a question said rhetorically into the wind with no intentions of hearing an answer. Until the answer one day comes.
As I often had, I was tossing prayers like bags in a casual game of cornhole. I was just hoping one would land and score the points I need to see change. One by one, those prayers bounce off and seemingly did not bring any victory. That is when my prayers turned to those two questions: “why even do this? Why go through with it?”
The description of the particular circumstance is really irrelevant because whether it was that day or one of 100 like it, the emotion was real, the feelings were present. Feelings that had felt like old friends rather than random passerbys. As I fought to keep the neatly painted picture of perfection I presented to the world, the cracked edges were starting to show. What no one saw was the foundation was already broken. The exhausted emotions of feeling like a failure were present all around. Instead of answers, all I had were questions.
Have you ever felt this way? Has it ever been that bad?
In my moment of what felt like the worst possible timing is when I heard it or him or something. Looking back I recognize it was God’s whisper into my heart. In my moment of quitting, he was showing up. Maybe that is what David felt when he wrote:
“You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.”
Psalms 51:16-17 NIV
As parents and people, we work so hard to give them (whoever your them is) everything, often leaving us with little left. We spend and spin, leaving our lives feeling shattered and broken. And in that broken place, with little left to offer God of beauty, he says “I will take that. I will take the brokenness. I will take the contrite, remorseful, grieving prayer. It is beautiful.”
In this same psalm (or song) David cried out for cleansing. He asks the Lord to cleanse his heart. To make right his relationship with the Lord. David, who had everything in the world to offer the Lord, and it truth had, brought what was most valuable, a broken heart, a broken spirit.
If you are beaten and battered by life and it’s circumstances, be broken in the best way. Bring it to the Lord. Bring the hurt, the fears, the insecurities, the beaten down spirit, and lay it at his feet. He will not turn you away.
This is your starting point. This is the place of change. This is the beauty in our brokenness.
