Being Broken is Not the End

“There’s nothing stronger than a broken woman who has rebuilt herself.” - Hannah Gadsby

The meaning of brokenness in the English Cambridge Dictionary is a state of strong emotional pain that stops someone from living a normal or healthy life. We are all capable of, have been or currently are broken. I once heard that the brokenness in you is a bigger threat than the brokenness that is in the world. What is in you affects how you see and deal with what’s around you. This hit me deep when I heard it, because at that very moment I was still broken. I was healing but not healed, so I was still getting triggered. But for the first time I noticed how it affected my behavior. My insecurities were making me doubt everything I did or said. I was jumping to conclusions because of fear and felt the need to protect myself immediately. I pushed away because of the pain that I had felt so deep. Pain I never knew I could feel, 

We live in a broken world, which means we are bound to get hurt again. We are bound to be in repeat situations. That alone sounds scary. Who is trying to survive a plane crash only to find themselves right back on a rickety plane. That can make anyone want to freak out. But here’s the thing. We don’t have to get on that plane. We can find a normal plane and finally get the smooth trip we were looking for the first time. But how can we tell the difference? How can we tell if it is safe or not?

We have to do our part to make sure we learn the lesson from the situation that broke us.

We need to take a good look at it. Who and what were we dealing with? What was wrong with the whole picture? How did we play our part and how did we react to it? What did we hate most about it and what do we hope to never experience again?

Then we need to understand how we got there. What red flags did we miss? What led us to make those choices? Getting these answers helps us learn more about ourselves and possibly previous traumas that created today’s choices. But don’t stop there. Let’s figure out what we need to change going forward. Let’s look for those red flags we wrote down from this lesson. Let’s heal from those past traumas. Let’s deal with those insecurities. Doing this work on ourselves puts us on that path of avoiding a repeat situation. It helps us not transfer our brokenness to others in the world. It helps us to not react from a broken place. 

Don’t think being broken means its over. No matter how broken you are, there is always something you can do. The fact that you are still breathing is enough to show there’s more work to be done. Being broken also doesn’t mean you are weak, or dumb, or failed. You had a light in you that the enemy stole. But they don’t realize that we have a God who created light. Therefore we are connected to the ultimate source. We know a guy! That light that died inside will return! So keep fighting, keep healing, keep moving forward, keep growing. I know it sounds hard. I know you feel tired. But you have got this! Everything you need is inside of you.