"A Better Broken"

As I write this post, I am crying.  I'm crying tears of hope because I just finished reading a book that I should have finished a couple weeks ago, or whenever it was I got it, but I just finished right now.

I'm also crying because I'm so broken by all the events and circumstances of my life for the past 10 months as well as the last 24 hours.  If you follow me on social media you know that yesterday my son got his last drain removed which brought us inexpressible joy and relief.  I walked out of that hospital with so much weight of life taken off my shoulders and I can't imagine how much my son felt with that weight removed.

But before we even got home we got a phone call which let us know that our journey wasn't quite over.  I won't go into it here because it is just an asterisk  on top of our whole journey thus far.  We will get through it.  Together, we will get through it.

But the book, yes, about the book.

This isn't truly a book review but more like a book recommendation.  As I said, I started reading the book When God Doesn't Fix It by Laura Story a couple weeks ago.  Laura's music is a favorite of mine and I've written about her before here.  So I got the book for several reasons-- among them that I love her music, I knew a bit of her story, and the title describes my life perfectly during this season.  

So I devoured the first 3/4 of the book quickly and for a reason I couldn't put my finger on I just didn't pick it up and finish it until yesterday.

 God is SO good.  Because the part of the book I've read since yesterday has really been just what I needed in this 24 hour period.  

In Chapter 19,  Laura writes about "A Better Broken" which speaks to me so deeply in my heart I cannot even express it here.  Over the last many months I have been trudging through the sand of my own brokenness and feeling like it would never be resolved.  It probably won't.  That should be really awful news.  But reading the last several chapters of Laura's book made me realize that there is a purpose in my brokenness.  Of course I already knew that, but it kind of needs reinforcing daily to remember it.

She talks about the apostle Paul and how God dealt with his "thorn in the flesh" about which we are never told specifically what the source was in his life.   On page 267 she writes that God told Paul 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."(2 Corinthians 12:9).  Her response is this:

"It's an astonishing answer. God said to Paul, and therefore , perhaps to all of us, 'I'm going to leave your brokenness there, and I'm not going to fix it, because my grace is enough for you. Not  only that, but my power is perfected when you can't do anything to get rid of it yourself.'

page 267, When God Doesn't Fix It,   Laura Story

I sort of want to put several more quotes from the book here but I won't.  It is my hope that you will read the book yourself and see how it applies to YOUR brokenness.  Yes.  We are all broken because the world was cursed by sin in the Garden and we are all sinful creatures.  

But God doesn't allow us to live in our brokenness for nothing.  He doesn't PUT brokenness in our lives but it happens because we live in a sin filled world.  But God is a Redeemer, not just of our sins, but of our lives.  He can and will redeem the brokenness in us to "make Him the hero of our stories" as Laura puts it, and to point others to Him.  

Please, please, if you are a human person you need to read this book.  You can get it here and start to see how God can give you a "better broken" when He doesn't fix something that you so desperately want fixed.

Because I love you,