There are no words…

I haven’t written in years. There’s a reason for that. Life got messy. Really, really messy. I didn’t have time to focus on my thoughts about it because quite frankly I was too busy trying to survive it. I also didn’t know how to really put into words what was happening. I want to be real, honest, vulnerable in these posts but that is difficult to do when I also have to write about how other people’s lives and choices are affecting me. I struggle with how to be authentic with my feelings while also protecting their right to their own story and whether they even want it told . It’s a balance I didn’t feel like I could find while in the midst of it. In hindsight I wish I had written though because then there wouldn’t be so much “catching up” to do. In order to understand where I am now though one must know the journey that took me here. So I will do my best to go back and retell some of the story as best I can in subsequent posts.

So where am I now?

Broken was the word that first came to mind, but broken implies hope of repair. Something that is broken can be fixed made new again. Think of a broken piece of pottery for example. In Japanese culture there is a tradition where they take broken pottery and glue it back together again with gold. This is called Kintsugi, and it is often seen as more valuable because of the beauty the gold brings to the original piece.

I am not broken. I am shattered. There is no reconnecting me into my former shape. I have lost all sense of what I once was. Even if someone took great care to gather all of my pieces together there would be no way to account for the parts that have shattered so completely that all that is left are fragments of dust. I am shattered….

This is not to say there is no hope, for I know that God can breath life into piles of dust and form the most beautiful and intricate designs. I just know that what will arise will be nothing like the old. He has allowed the shattering of everything that defined me and felt secure in my life. Even my faith in him has been shattered from its foundation. I have not lost Him, but rather all concepts of what I thought He was and what life was supposed to look like. So now I exist as a shattered pile of dust and ash and await the remolding God will do of my heart and life. It is painful, devastatingly painful and I cannot see a future beyond the shattering.

“I am poured out like water, And all of my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax; It is melted [by anguish] within me. My strength is dried up like a fragment of clay pottery; And my [dry] tongue clings to my jaws; And You have laid me in the dust of death. ” Psalm 22 14-15 AMP

But on this I stand

“I waited patiently and expectantly for the Lord; And He inclined to me and heard my cry. He brought me up out of a horrible pit [of tumult and of destruction], out of the miry clay, And He set my feet upon a rock, steadying my footsteps and establishing my path. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God.” Psalm 40:1-3a AMP