Chapter Eighteen. Reclaiming Brokenness

Exchanged Glory V: God Meant it for Good

They enabled me to enter a state of brokenness, where I recognized that even with all that God had done, I couldn’t be in control. I couldn’t fix the situations around me – or even fix myself. My world was broken …and I was broken...

Angry Praying

In the year 2000, I allowed my emotions to rise to the surface and expressed them in a wild prayer to God.^[55] It was the longest string of f-word filled sentences I had ever heard, but nothing less seemed honest. My heart was sick from suppressing the ugly war within me. I let it burst from my mouth with profanity and sent it toward the throne of grace.

The swear words didn’t surprise me (I had been holding them back for a long time), but I wasn’t sure what else I was going to say. Would my prayer be full of selfish venting, or would it be a call for God’s justice? I was pleased to find that much of it was a sincere cry for God to reverse the damage done by sin. I wasn’t just complaining that people were annoying me. Instead I was crying out as David did in the book of Psalms.

O God, how long will the adversary reproach? Will the enemy blaspheme Your name forever? Why do You withdraw Your hand, even Your right hand? Take it out of Your bosom and destroy them.

(Psalm 7:10-11)

I was frustrated with those who wouldn’t listen to truth. They were hurting my family, and when I tried to bring Jesus into the situation, they portrayed me as a hard-hearted religious nutcase. Their view of the world made it seem impossible for me to express my concern for my children in a way that looked loving.

I knew that I wanted to work with people, because I had just spent many years doing that at church. I believed that if others would let Jesus in, He could fix any problem, but I had now run into a group of people who didn’t want to let Him in. They were caught up in a worldly view of life that didn’t allow me to say much of anything to them without either arousing their anger or looking like an idiot.

When I prayed my angry prayer, I called out in anguish for God to either change them, judge them, or work in me so I could love them. Without a major shift somewhere, I was going to fall apart. I had tried for decades to treat people as best I could, but it was destroying me. I needed something deeper – some sort of fundamental transformation. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew my present approach had to come to an end. Stuffing my emotions might preserve some outward peace, but it did so at the cost of an internal firestorm. I screamed out to God in the hope that He would rain water on the inferno.

Affirmation

As I prayed, I sensed the Holy Spirit affirming my anger. Though my heart was far from perfect, He seemed to rush to my side and say, “I am angry too. I hate sin, and you have a right to feel that those who reject my ways deserve judgment. Your anger is a good emotion. You just need Me to teach you what to do with it.”

I was a bit surprised. Though this message wasn’t entirely unexpected, the fact that it came as I was spouting f-words was. My Heavenly Father was showing me that He was more interested in me than He was in whether I expressed myself perfectly. He wanted to hear the emotions that I had held back for so long. He knew how important they were both to my relationship with Him and my health. He wanted to be involved with them, to teach me what they were about, to shape them according to His heart.

The time for full forgiveness of everyone involved would come, but for now God was helping me face the fact that I was furious and had a good reason to feel that way. He was leading me to embrace the emotions I had run from for so long. Until I did that, there wasn’t much chance they would be transformed.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but a major shift was occurring in my approach to Anger and Sorrow. Previously, I had only accepted them when they motivated me toward good behavior. If I couldn’t see some practical benefit, I looked for a way to avoid them or reshape them into something useful. That was why I tended to become angry at myself rather than others. I knew I couldn’t change anyone else, so why bother being mad at them? I figured that it was better to chastise myself, the only person I could control (or at least sort of control). I was a pragmatist with Anger and Sorrow; I wanted them to serve some useful purpose.

When I prayed my prayer, I at last allowed my feelings to reflect truth rather than practical strategy. I stopped considering whether complaining to God about the people who were hurting my children would lead to any constructive action on my part. Instead, I expressed how much I hated their sin, which was in some ways a reflection of God’s hatred for their sin. Even with my imperfections, my rage contained a good deal more godly influence than I expected. I was expressing my deep hurt over a violation of God’s goodness. At their root, my emotions were gifts; I just needed to learn how to handle them better.

Grief

By the time I had finished my prayer, I was sobbing. In my tears, I found one of the missing answers that had eluded me for so long. Anger and Sorrow weren’t always supposed to motivate me to action. Sometimes they were just there to help me Grieve my losses. They enabled me to enter a state of Brokenness, where I recognized that even with all that God had done in my life, I couldn’t be in control. I couldn’t fix the situations around me – or even fix myself. My world was Broken (in the sense that the people and objects I needed to rely on would fail me), and I was Broken also (in the sense that I had weaknesses that kept me from being up to the task of handling myself and the world around me). This is symbolized in Figure 19.

Prev Fig

Next Fig

The highlighted portions of Figure 19 show that I was now Grieving my losses and admitting my Brokenness. At the same time, I was looking for God’s Appointments (His activity) to bring new life out of the chaos. The hope that He would move allowed me to deal with the reality of sin and dysfunction without falling into despair. Though I didn’t have answers, He did. I could mourn my losses without being overwhelmed by them, because I knew that He would work even them for good.

The Apostle Paul described his own struggle with brokenness in Romans 7:

What I don't understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise. So if I can't be trusted to figure out what is best for myself and then do it, it becomes obvious that God's command is necessary. But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can't keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don't have what it takes. I can will it, but I can't do it. I decide to do good, but I don't really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don't result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.

(Romans 7:15-20, the Message)

Paul presents the answer to his dilemma in Romans 8. He describes the work of the Holy Spirit in the middle of our mess.

With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ's being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A <page 110>new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.

(Romans 8:1-2, The Message)

The ongoing work of the Holy Spirit is what I mean when I refer to God’s Appointments. He has a time and a way for us to handle each challenge in our lives. We can hear Him and work with Him as He reveals each appointed step in His plan.

The above figure no longer contains the arrows from Fear, Guilt, Anger, and Sorrow to the Sinful Behavior and Attitudes box. This symbolizes that I had turned from mistreating myself over my failures and the failures of others. Instead, I was opening my heart to God’s assessment of my situation, even if that assessment meant embracing the fact that I was suffering loss because of both my sins and the sins of others, and even if I felt powerless to stop that.

I had, of course, confessed the damage caused by both my sins and the sins of others many times, but while doing so, I had usually kept a tight leash on myself to make sure I felt as little pain as possible. For the most part I was trying to limit my losses and sidestep damage. The difference now was that I was Grieving my losses and letting myself feel the pain associated with them. I was expressing my anguish, admitting that the leash I had kept on myself was both strangling me and hurting others. It was time to mourn as my image of what life should be was crumbling.

Transparency

There was a difference between this time of Brokenness and the time I had entered into a state of Brokenness as a twenty-one year old.^[56] The fact that my previous state of Brokenness had shown up in “smoking fetish form” (a form which had led me into the fetish) had so frightened me that I had failed to understand what it was really about. Now as a forty-two year old, I discovered what I had been too immature to recognize when I was younger: I could be Broken in parts of my being without compromising the work God had done in other parts.

Brokenness wasn’t a matter of me being totally dysfunctional or totally functional. It didn’t mean my whole life was going to fall into sexual sin, or any other kind of sin. The Holy Spirit could enable me to mourn over areas in which I was still a mess without giving up what He had already taught me in other areas. I could bring to the surface sinful emotions without them spilling into damaging sinful actions. I was learning a “controlled Brokenness” – one based on His ongoing work in my life.

Controlled Brokenness put me in a position of safety from which I could pour out to the Lord the worst parts of my heart. He could handle the ugliness of what I was saying. With Him, I could be myself, no matter how insane. I was able to express the intensity of what churned inside me.

At first, I didn’t tell others much of what I was doing. If they had known, they might have been hurt – or they might have counseled me to quickly move past my feelings. I was also concerned that they might tell me to put in place unnecessary boundaries that would have kept me from processing what was happening in me.

<page 111>Though it is generally a good idea to go through these sorts of changes with the help of a competent counselor, I didn’t sense the Holy Spirit leading me in that direction. I had spent many years studying and experimenting largely on my own as I had learned wisdom and theology. What I was doing now was an extension of that. I stayed accountable in the sense that I would have told someone if I saw myself getting into serious trouble, but I kept most of what happened between me and God.

He had forged logic and willpower into my personality, and He was now using these qualities to help me explore the most dangerous parts of my being. The same Self-Control that had previously been misused to squash my inner life was now being used to keep me steady as I explored it. The wisdom I had learned from Proverbs sustained me as I allowed the layers of bad coping mechanisms to carefully be pulled back. It helped me to steer through the changes as God brought together years of His work to bring to light difficult issues that had previously seemed impossible to understand.

I can barely describe what it meant for me to finally be making progress with my emotions. I had forced myself to ignore them for so long! My heart had longed to express its anguish to a God Who could do something about it: “Do You see what is happening? It’s too much for me! I’m furious at You, the world, and I don’t know who or what else! And I’m terrified. I don’t know what is happening. It’s depressing, and I am ashamed that I am in this state. How can I keep choosing what is right only to see so many wrong results!? It doesn’t make sense. Please help!”

At last I had the kind of relationship with Him in which I could hear Him as I expressed myself in this way (with a few expletives occasionally thrown in for emphasis). Years earlier, the sheer strength and imperfection of my emotions had caused me to freeze up and decide that I was too confused to try to be this honest. When answers didn’t seem to come, I backed away from transparency and focused on just doing what I knew I should. Now I had learned how to hear Him even while my wildest emotions were raging. His insights came day by day, slowly explaining what was out of place and telling me how to work with Him as He put it where it belonged.

That was what made Brokenness work. Without His input, I would have felt as if I was complaining into the wind and possibly slipping into insanity. The difficult years at church I described in Chapters Seventeen and Eighteen had made the difference. God had taught me to discern His voice, and that paved the way for what was happening now.

Each new touch from Him was a step in His plan. His Spirit was making my life into something beyond my ability, carefully unraveling my greatest mysteries, reversing the damage from years’ worth of self-induced emotional abuse, repairing demonically inflicted wounds.

I was healing. My inner being – the one that had been architected for lifelong bondage to a smoking fetish – was being re-architected for freedom!

10 per page

Search Comments

This page has been visited 0003 times.

Contents