when Christmas leaves you broken

I was shuffling through the contents of a drawer, seeking something I wanted yet that I never did find; finding what I didn't seek and actually needed: a little booklet whose pages had been glued and filled with cutout scriptures. I flipped through and stopped to read one. My eyes slowly, waveringly traced each word, chewing and swallowing them as they turned into one encapsulated meaning. My heart held a weary distrust -- 'cause hurt makes one wary of trusting others. It was as if I was decoding an encryption of sorts, and as soon as I held the entirety of the verse unlocked and inside of me, I nearly choked on the words I had eaten:

"A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given to him from Heaven," John 3:27.

A flood of surprise, and a surprising flood of comfort swept over me. The distrust vanished and I quickly read it again to ensure I understood correctly. My eyes no longer traced it, instead my fingers did, carefully fingerprinting each word so it became covered with incriminating evidence of my presence and it's presence with me.

It all comes from Heaven, and I can only receive what God has sent for me from Him. So then suffering too, comes from Heaven.

It's been a Christmas season heavy with suffering, whether from the news around the world, the news around this community, or the news around this house, and the pain seems unending. A friend who is going through much suffering shared a blog last week in which I read this quote by Charles Spurgeon:

“It would be a very sharp and trying experience to me to think that I have an affliction which God never sent me, that the bitter cup was never filled by his hand, that my trials were never measured out by him, nor sent to me by his arrangement of their weight and quantity.”

I read it, and swallowed hard because I knew I didn't understand it. 

Fast-forward to now, I read it, and I swallow hard because the shape of those words is forming within me, bulging and aching, reminding in an intense, painful sort of way that this too is from God. And there is comfort in that. 

Comfort because, if this was not from Him, then I would be utterly alone. 

Comfort because, if He had not arranged this, it would negate His sovereign control over the universe and over me.

Comfort because, in knowing that this is from Him, I know it is not about blame nor guilt.

Comfort because, as His word promises, patience and suffering produces endurance and hope. 

This morning I beheld the edges of a raw and rising winter sun, spreading a cool display of color upon the horizon of the day after Christmas. On Christmas Eve I beheld the hopeful flicker and flutter of a brave-hearted candle flame, warming courage in an empty soul such as mine. 

Colors of light, colors of hope. 

But the day previous I had beheld colors of darkness, the different shades of charcoal black and feathery grey, pulsating with throbs of white that somehow didn't give the appearance of lightness nor hope. It was an analyzing darkness and a quiet one as well. Too quiet. 

The day had started with laughter and merriment, but as the sun made it's route across the sky and the hands on the clock did their duty, happy sighing faded into the background and sparks of joy scurried into corners like frightened mice. 

I pulled the sheets up over myself to cover this body from the danger of unexpected news, but my soul remained uncovered and bare, vulnerable to the harsh winds of the unknown and the fears that are all too greatly known. Nothing could shelter me from words, from clean-cut and sterile diagnoses and the ensuing overwhelmed confusion. Nothing could protect me from the brokenness. 

We all carry it, the brokenness of ourselves pieced together, tattered and torn from these experiences we call life. It's a broken that comes from the sharp and jarring fragments of this world which cut us down and make us jaded. It's a bad brokenness that starts upon the first inhalation of toxic air after expulsion from the womb, and ends with the last exhale that leads into eternity. 

But the cross offers a different type of brokenness. A good brokenness like the kind that causes a kernel of wheat to grow, like the kind that breaks fresh, steaming bread, like the kind that breaks the water in a womb to birth life. It's a brokenness that is hopeful, and even necessary, for living a love-filled and love-giving Christian life. It was the breaking of Christ's body after all that gave us life. 

I'm only just learning this, only just beginning to grasp what this means in my life and how living broken has implications for each moment of every day. How living broken can make you whole. 

Back when we lived on a frigid blue lake, our one delight was being down by the shoreside looking for lake glass. After each discovery there was a challenge to find one that was bigger, better, or more beautiful. 

Green and blue are rather common colors, it's the red pieces of lake glass that are the rarest. 

After a year of living there, we had quite the collection of smoothed, tumbled lake glass which we kept treasured in clear glass bottles or arranged on pieces of drift wood as a table center piece. 

I never understood what it was about broken pieces of glass that is so intriguing, so captivating that we would ignore even taking a dip in the refreshing water simply to search the rocks for hidden lake glass. And while I still don't understand, I now see another dimension of beauty in it all -- we sought brokenness. We would scour high and low to find not just glass but broken glass. 

Glass that had been whole once upon a time and was now shattered and scattered a million different directions, only some of it ending up on our shore. But if we had we found an intact glass bottle, it would have been useless to us and would have had no attraction nor luring quality to make us think even twice about it. Undoubtedly it would get thrown back in with a well-wishing that it showed up again someday but in the form of broken pieces. The joy, the beauty, and the excitement of the glass was because of its brokenness, not in spite of it. 

Likewise, the joy, beauty, and excitement in this life can actually come from being broken. Not as a side, nor as an after-thought, but as a result of the breaking. And it doesn't make sense, but neither does looking for lake glass--yet we seek it and take high pleasure in doing so. 

I fingered a few pieces of sky blue and emerald green sea glass that I found tucked away in my drawer--glass I had extracted from the seashore of the Island of Hispaniola. You can find it all over the world. Broken glass, just like brokenness, is everywhere. And where brokenness is, there Christ is too. Suffering, pain, and loss is not to be stuffed away in a drawer somewhere and forgotten, it is to be sought out by Christians, sought out because that's what Christ did. And we are Christ's body. 

A body built upon suffering and brokenness, but in ways unexplainable and mysterious, beautiful.