Breaking and Burning

This weekend my mom was in the hospital. She's out now, but it was a rough weekend. Yesterday when I got back in to work, I was exhausted and emotionally fragile.

The big thing that kept me breaking into tears at intervals throughout the morning was that people kept asking me how I was doing, and how my mom was doing, and meaning it. This afternoon, two coworker-friends who have been keeping tabs on me closely since Sunday came in and sat in my office, which they had never done before. A voice inside my head said, "You don't have to keep checking on me. I'm not broken." And then another voice said, "Yes. I am."

Laurie R. King writes of a woman who has been carrying a weight of grief and snaps, completely breaks down in front of someone she was trying to look good for. In looking back on the incident, the woman says that "[he] had seen me in that despicable state and burnt me with his compassion." That's how I feel when people keep coming, even when I have nothing to give them.

I hate being burnt. I hate being broken. Tonight at prayer meeting, I thought of this verse: "As for these things which you are looking at, the days will come in which there will not be left one stone upon another which will not be torn down" (Luke 21:6). I feel like that's me, like one stone after another is being knocked over. Part of me grieves that, but part of me is waiting to see what I will be afterwards (1 John 3:2).

When my dad was in the hospital, I felt like I was doing really well, really praying it out of the park and exercising faith like nobody's business. When my mom was in the hospital, my internal prayer went more like, "God, I have no idea what you're doing. I don't even know what to say to you right now. I'm a little afraid of you, and a little angry about this, and I just don't know." But that's a prayer the Spirit translates (Rom. 8:26).

I have nothing. But everything.

"For God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us."~~2 Corinthians 4:6-7

The more chips there are in a jar of clay, the more worn out it is with use, the more what is inside of it is revealed. So I want to stop trying to seal the broken places, trying to distract everybody from seeing them, trying to pretend they aren't there. I want people to see that light.

"The Lord is near to the brokenhearted

And saves those who are crushed in spirit."

~~ Psalm 34:18