The Brokeness of a Day...

Quotes from Ch. 1 Abba's Child

• Blaise Pascal, "God made man in his own image and man returned the compliment."

• Nicholas Harnan "This [brokenness] is what needs to be accepted. Unfortunately, this is what we tend to reject. Here the seeds of a corrosive self-hatred take root. This painful vulnerability is the characteristic feature of our humanity that most needs to be embraced in order to restore our human condition to a healed state."

• Henri Nouwen "Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in teh voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, 'Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody.'...[My dark side says,] I am no good...I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved." Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence."

It is at this moment of sheer brokenness...where the pain is often greater than you care to experience and the self-commentaries want to shout out the rejectedness of my own heart do I cry out of desparation. Apart from you Oh Lord, what am I? How can I exist except within the confines of your will, of your understanding, or your truth. I have the dissipation of losing myself. The truth is, there are so many things that vy for that desire to claim this heart of mind. Each day I'm awkaen to the thoughts that are contrary to my own identity of who I am as a child of God..forgiven and redeemed. At night, I'm force to live with those contrary choices I made wondering if there is something greater for me out there.

It is in this tension of life that we encounter the brokenness of our hearts. I have come to the stark realiziation that trying to be everything to everybody left me shapeless. I was conforming to the ever changing world...a chameleon to the spectators looking through that glass. Oh, how easy it is to lose yourself...lose that understanding of God. In the pursuit of Godly objectives, I lost the love of Christ that undergirded the being of who I am. I had fallen asleep to the deeper desires and found myself chasing after lesser things such as that of men's approval. How did my heart get so easily deceived? I am not sure, and I don't even know...

How we in ministry find our greatest temptation in the occupation of a calling. The lens that we place on our lives is one trying to find the next best insight into God, another life changing understanding, and all the while in the search of Godly things, we have forgotten to be found by God. Those quiet moments that led our hearts with such clarity into our calling have become but nostalgic moments of the past...a fading memory as the demands grow greater and greater...The voice whispers, there are souls to be saved...all the while God's voice wants to save the soul that is trying so hard.

Never in any year have I tried so hard to make God's kingdom come. I grew in knowledge, in understanding, I grew in capacity and maturity, but what I lacked in was all I had at basic. That was true peacefulness and quietness before my Lord and creator. The agendas overwhelmed me, the expectations became me and I was left wondering where the joy of life had gone. Was I not the one who was suppose to preach of this joy? Its funny b/c it doesn't hit you all at once. The chameleon slowly evolves into its fullness as the child of God devolves so in this delicate balance, I found the subtleties to be so alluring. The change so sublime...

I have lived that paper-thin life that kept me from really having that true in depth communion with God that is necessary to sustain any sort of ministry life. The deposited charisma can carry us far, but the substance by which it works is but a gift poorly managed. The amazing thing about this period is the fact that God still works and God calls us not into perfection, but calls us into relationship. However, it is the grieving in what was loss that I realize what could've been. The deep regret for reaping what is sown is one that is to mark the character of those that follow Him. Not in a way that consumes but in a way that the wound becomes a rememberance of God's deliverance and our wayward ways. The juxtaposition of the two brings into contrast life lessons that portray the necessity to cling to the cross always.

As the drama of my life unfolds before my eyes, I sit here broken for sake of this soul that desperately tried so hard. As Adam and Eve found themselves naked, this charade that I have been masquerading in as come to a close and the truth has been revealed. I stand not trying to hide anymore for the fact is I cannot "Get Away..." This God, my Savior, My Lord, My Creator....oh, how the hound of heaven chases...relentlessly pursues with a love so captivating, a love capable of picking up the broken pieces of my life and fashioning them in way that brings it into more completeness before the brokenness... the non-senseical statement only further exasberates my explanation of the grace by which God responds to this broken child.

God, I trust you...I want to trust you...help me to trust you....