It just doesn't make sense to me. I’m broken. It seems every day I’m struggling internally on what life is all about. How can I be a person of influence, a person called to speak identity back into people, when I, myself, am broken? Or is being broken my credential to influence?
It seems I never influence people in my let-me-help-you perspective, in my know-it-all mentality, in my pride. I don’t remember ever influencing someone in that way. I do remember being broken. In my brokenness something speaks really loudly. Something comes through that causes people to listen. Something in the atmosphere seems to literally change, hearts are softened. In this softening somehow people are influenced. And all the while I leave wondering, what did I ever do?
I modeled brokenness. And that’s what they needed. They needed to get their eyes fixed off themselves. In brokenness it is realized we have to turn to someone greater than ourselves, and that someone is not me. When I try to fill the savior role, whoever I am talking to is immediately distanced, as they should be. (If someone is needy, they may accept you as a temporary savior; do not accept.) It’s as if they intrinsically know I can’t heal them, and I would just be getting in the way, making things worse.
If I hold onto anything I've learned these last three months, I hope it will be: I’m broken. And that’s where God loves to display his presence – in our brokenness. I don’t want to be someone that is quick to say: Everything’s going to be okay… Don’t worry about it… Here, let me solve all your issues… I have the best advice that will make your life amazing… No! I’m not a self-help book. Maybe it’s not about being healed once and for all. Maybe it’s about realizing I am a channel. Realizing yielding my life to God, somehow in some crazy way, allows joy, peace, freedom, love, grace – all these things – to transform me. I am healed. But not forever and always; healing is not a one time event. Healing (or influence) happens within the context of this relationship. In order for healing to happen, relationship has to happen. And in order for relationship with God to happen, we have to realize we need him: realize we’re broken without him.
And with this I realize: my acute awareness to my brokenness will be what opens opportunities for deeper relationships, healing, for the presence of God to be revealed. Brokenness is one of the aspects of humility (being known for who you are), humility reveals God, and God influences us – greatly.