Brokenness

Let me apologize for missing last week's post. There was a lot going on that I had to take care of, but that's no excuse. If there's any way you can forgive me, any way I can make it up to you, please let me know in the comments. For now, please enjoy this week's discussion.

 

It’s one of the hardest things in the world, to admit I am broken. It’s hard because broken means weak. It means I no longer fulfill my intended purpose. It means I am beyond repairing myself, that the little cracks running through my jar have expanded and forced me to give up whatever hold I had on wholeness. A broken jar of clay – what is that worth, in our world where replacement is cheaper than repair and so few material things are worth fixing? In a world where so many brilliant minds go untouched by the cracks in our own – or so we think?

Here’s the thing about those cracks, the first lie we believe about them: we think we're the only ones who have them. We think the rest of the world isn't cracked, broken, shattered, flawed - and it's just not true. Those cracks,they’re present in everyone. Some are on the outside, where everyone can see and those who care can help, while those who don’t or who take a dislike to the jar can ignore or exploit them. Others have cracks on the inside, and they watch carefully to see what it looks like when they are admitted. If those around them care about the cracks on the outside, maybe they can reveal their own; but if others are apathetic or destructive, only the greatest of stress will make them reveal their flaws. Some pretend they have none, and hide them well, while others show them off, proud of the damage done.

I’m rereading a trilogy called Angel Eyes, by Shannon Dittemore – outside of my normal genres, but nonetheless I’m drawn to it because of the ideas it discusses. Besides dealing with the supernatural realm of angels and demons through a Christian lens, it also addresses how to be broken as this fallen world demands, how to struggle with the grief of life, and how to turn to God and trust Him despite the hardships we face. Brielle, the main character, begins the first book as a very broken girl. Her mother died of cancer before she could remember her, a hurt she’s dealt with and moved on, but now her best friend has been killed and she believes she could have stopped it. She tries to convince a trusted teacher and mentor of hers that she’s fine, she’s doing okay, she’s not as broken as he thinks. And he responds with one of the most grace-filled and powerful statements I’ve heard outside of Scripture.

“It’s okay to be broken. You know that, right?”

It's okay to be broken. And it's okay to acknowledge that you're broken. Those who admit their cracks, their scars, their mangled mindsets and broken beliefs – they’re the ones who can get help. Once they’re out in the open, they are seen by those who care.

Only when we are broken can we be fixed. Only when we are sick can we be healed. Only when we are sinful can we be forgiven. Only when we are torn can we be restored.

But it’s not safe to admit it, you may think. It’s not safe for you because you’re vulnerable; it’s not safe for them because it may hurt them. To some extent, you’re right. The whole world can’t handle our brokenness. There are too many fools who stoop to run their fingers through the broken shards and open old wounds of their own. Many would take a ragged-edged shard in their hands and clench it until they opened their own skin, and then blame you for the breaking. Some would even take that same shard and grind it into another, smashing the pieces into dust and wounding beyond repair.

But there are some you can trust – and as soon as I said that, someone surely came to mind. Some see your brokenness already, better than you do, and are merely waiting for you to open your mouth so they know you're ready for their help. Some care deeply, but haven’t seen that side of you, and they’d be at your side in a moment comforting you if you only asked. Some will have advice, small bottles of glue and plaster, that they can help you apply to bring the pieces back together. Others will only have listening ears, a sympathy beyond expressing, acknowledgement of the pain you’re feeling. Hopefully, all will point you to the Master Potter, the One who can take your shards of broken earthenware and reform them into a more precious, more durable, and even more valuable vessel than before.

There’s a subcategory of pottery created by the Japanese and known as kintsugi. Kintsugi takes shards of broken jars, some of which look to be beyond repair, and painstakingly fit the pieces back together, filling the cracks with molten gold. This makes a jar that was once useless useful again, a container that once leaked hold fast, a vessel once shattered now whole. And the shards of pottery which were worthless to others come together and are worth more than ever – the more cracks it had, the more gold is used, and the more it is worth.

We are all kintsugi. We have fallen to the ground, shattered into a thousand pieces. But our Father, the Master Potter, has gathered us back together. Once we allow Him to work in us, He takes the gold, the blood of His Son, and mends every crack in our skin, our hearts, our minds. He restores us in ways we could never have dreamed, making us more beautiful and valuable than we ever could have been as whole, untouched jars of clay. 

No matter how broken we are, He can use us.The more cracks, the more gold, the more blood of Christ covering us, the more story we have to tell. Yes, He can use us.

He can remake us.

And we can be whole again.

Are You Fighting Right?

The dragons that scare us sometimes aren't the ones we should be fighting.

Let it never be said that this blog encouraged anyone to give up and give in. Let it never be said that I told you it was okay to let a struggle consume you, to allow your characters to fall into a pit and decide to remain there, to throw your hands in the air and say, “I go no further.” We are fighters, all of us, fighters against injustice, disability, irrationality, fear, doubt, sin, our own minds, the devil’s schemes. These fights are noble and worthy and should never be abandoned, and those who fight them should not rest until they gain victory.

But surely I don’t have to explain to you that any fight can be taken too far, can become a vicious duel instead of a righteous battle, can make any hero into a villain and portray a villain as a hero. How do you tell when it is time to keep fighting and when it is time to drop your weapons? How do you discern whether to push through with prayer or change strategies, perhaps allowing your attention to be drawn to another area? How do you determine that your battle has already been won, and God is calling you to another one?

The truth is, I have no idea. I don’t know all of you or all of your battles. But there’s one major question you should ask yourself constantly about your battle, and it’s about the only black-and-white rule I can give you about it (and authors, stay tuned – your characters have battles too; how does this rule apply to them?):

Is your fight hurting someone else?

This is hard to think about, especially if you feel like the victim in your battle. It’s hard if you’re in a bad situation, if you’re fighting for basic rights on your own behalf or another’s, if you’re fighting your own mind. It’s much easier to label someone else as the problem, to put a face or name or color on the struggle so that you can, in a sense, see what you’re fighting. But the fact remains: no matter how noble your fight, if others are suffering it’s time to stop, or at least change tactics.

Internal battles can often appear in strange ways in your relationships with other people, and you need to make sure you’re not taking out your frustration with yourself on those who love you most. It’s easy to isolate, to focus on yourself, to assume you’re the only one affected because it’s all in your own head, but the fact is there are always others who care – and others who can become collateral damage in your struggle with yourself.

Authors – are your characters fighting against themselves? Are there relationships being damaged in the process? It’s a great way to build tension, but you’ll have to be sure the tension is resolved, for better or for worse.

The same goes for fighting against injustice in our world: yes, those treated unjustly deserve better, and taking up a cause that is not your own, being a voice for those who have none, is a beautiful and courageous thing. But if it involves villainizing another group of people, it’s time to put on the brakes. No country, no government, no organization, no race is solely responsible for any injustice in the world. The root problem is sin, and not only is it universal, but it’s not going anywhere. All we can do is fight the symptoms and wait for Christ’s return – but that’s another topic altogether. My point is, forcing anyone to play the villain’s role only increases injustice and hatred. So assess your cause, address your issues, and make sure you aren’t hurting anyone, physically or mentally, deliberately or accidentally.

Authors – are your characters careless of their effects on everyone else? Do they have a hard time with stereotyping or demonizing other people groups? Do they accidentally, or even deliberately, harm others – including those who side with them – to accomplish their goals?

This gets tricky when it seems that there is a villain in your story, a face on your problem, a person on whom you can blame much of your hardship. It’s easy to fight against someone who has mistreated you or those you love, to hold one person responsible for everything that you struggle with. It’s even harder to deal with if it’s true on some level. If this is the case for you, let me first say how sorry I am. I’m sorry you’ve had to face such a battle, and I’m sorry you have a name with every scar, a face in every hard memory, a figure in your life who has betrayed you in such a way. All I can say is that God has never left you and never will, and He empowers you to change even that fight to one that rebuilds instead of destroys, heals instead of leaving more scars, and brings you closer to Him instead of further away. I can’t say what His plan is in such a situation, but I can say that if you fight a human enemy, you both lose in the end. If you release the battle to God, He can bring good from any evil and victory from any loss.

Authors – is your hero fighting the right villain? Or have they blamed their problems on another? How will this affect the story?

Realize that I never said you should stop fighting altogether. To be human is to struggle, to battle sin and doubt and wrong. You can never stop fighting until you die, or you become only a shell of your true self. You continue living only in the physical sense, and the fire that burned within you dwindles to ashes.

So keep fighting, keep struggling, keep battling, but also keep watching. Make sure you’re fighting from the right place, or your footing will eventually slip – and it hurts a lot more if you chose not to see it coming.

Forked Paths and Forked Tongues

Every path has forks in it. No paths lead straight from point A to point B. That’s not how our roads work, that’s not how our trails work, that’s not how our stories work, that’s not how our lives work. Going straight from one place to another may be the most effective way to get there, but that’s not what any of these things are about. It’s a cliché in some ways, but sayings become cliché for a reason: they’re true. So I’ll go ahead and say it: the journey is often more important than the destination.

Take it on the broadest level possible, for example. All humans begin our journeys on this earth at the same point A – we are born. We end at the same point B – we die. But no one would say that the best way to live this life is to get from A to B as quickly as possible; no, we mourn it as a tragedy when a journey is cut short, when someone takes a shortcut from A to B by their own choice, the choice of another, or an accident beyond human control.

Our lives aren’t about getting from birth to death as fast as possible. It’s all about what happens on the way.

Even within that, there are so many options, so many forks in the road before you reach the end. Stay in school or leave it? Move or stay in the same place? Marry or stay single? Quit one job for another or remain? Retire or continue to work? And with all of these decisions come endless details: where? When? Why? Who? How? Each is a smaller and smaller fork in the road, some rejoining earlier paths and some leading down roads you’ve never dreamt of.

It’s most difficult when the paths are equal. None of the choices I gave, in and of themselves and without context, are bad decisions. In most situations, it’s easy to find benefits and drawbacks to whichever choice you may make. It’s not a choice between a pleasant walk in the meadow and dark forests with dangerous creatures lurking, it’s between two tree-lined avenues which both have light and shade. Either could lead into the valley of the shadow of death; either could lead into beauty beyond our wildest dreams.

Fictional characters – and their authors – face these choices as well. Our characters face mundane choices that may have little bearing on their stories, or may change their entire course; they struggle with major decisions that could revolutionize their lives, or could have little impact at all. And we can all take a lesson from how authors are advised to deal with these decisions.

Our characters don’t live in a bubble of isolation (none I’m aware of, anyway), and neither do we. They seek out opinions and advice from people they trust, and so should we. These opinions may differ, and differ vastly, as we may find in our own lives. The ones we believe, or our characters believe, depend on the truths and lies that we already believe. We, or our characters, are in between two groups of people: wise mentors who encourage the truths we must accept, and the opponents who encourage the lies we believe.

These opponents are rarely true enemies, although they may seem that way. If we trust them enough to ask for advice, then they must on some level want what’s best for us, and they genuinely believe we need to hear what they have to say. Yet these well-meant words, if they are false, are only echoing hisses of our adversary, sliding off a forked tongue and worming their way into our minds. They tempt us towards the wrong fork in the road, promising peace or adventure, safety, security, adrenaline, compliance, rebellion, ease, difficulty – whatever we may be drawn to most. Even our most trusted mentors are imperfect people, and even they may become messengers with forked tongues in their efforts to provide what they think we need.

Without hope in Someone above ourselves, without hope in a knowledge surpassing our own, we are left alone with overwhelming voices trying to drown each other out, hands tugging us towards different forks until our arms are nearly ripped from our shoulders, decisions and details pounding at our minds with no clear sense of which way is right. We end up settling for arbitrary, playing eenie-meenie-miney-mo or spinning and pointing at a path and hoping for the best. Is this any way to live, forever unsure of our decisions, always wondering what would have happened with eenie instead of mo, left instead of right?

We need Someone higher to direct our decisions, or we’ll forever be wondering if we’re going astray. With characters, it’s the author directing the choices, writing the circumstances and the friends the character will trust and the messages the character will receive into the story and weaving it together into a story the character could never have dreamt of by themselves. For humans, we have to recognize that we are characters in the greatest story ever written, threads in the hands of a master Weaver, clay in the hands of an expert Potter.

Our choices are laid before us, good and bad, better and best, affecting our lives and the lives around us, weaving together in His hands. He has a good and perfect plan for each of us, chapters in His redemptive story, threads in His woven masterpiece. And if we stand at the crossroads long enough, if we walk with Him along the paths He’s laid out and ask Him for direction at every fork in the road, He will give it. He is not a cruel Author, toying with His characters, forcing them to make decisions on their own. He takes us gently by the hand and leads us towards the path He has for us.

And if we’re listening, the shouting voices will fade out until a still, small voice is left. The pulling hands will drop away until only His remains. The forked tongues will be silenced, the lies we have reinforced will be exposed, the truths revealed.

And then – then we may take those steps, following our Teacher and the teachers He has given us, trusting that He leads us not into the depths of the grave, but into everlasting life.

Yes, trusting. Because in the end, that’s all He asks us to do.