how being broken changed my life

   MAMA I MADE IT! Well, almost. After 6 months of living in Central America to further the kingdom, we are finally reaching the end. I don’t even know where to start. I don’t think I will ever be able to explain the World Race and the things that I’ve experienced because honestly, I don’t even fully comprehend it. Sometimes I truly wonder how I made it here. These were some of the most challenging, yet fulfilling months of my life. I know, I know, Im sounding really vague and cheesy, but I just don’t know how to put it into words, but im gonna try my best. 

   Before the race, I knew I loved Jesus, but I was cracking. I was a piece of pottery, crumbling under the pressure to get myself together, so I would feel “worthy enough” to ask people to support me to go on this 6 month mission trip. I was scrambling to put duct tape on the cracks, glue to hold the chips together. That was the problem right there. I was the one trying to do all the fixing. Me, a broken, flawed human, trying to patch up my imperfections. I saw my flaws and I wanted nothing more than for them to disappear, or at least not be seen by others. I wanted to appear as a beautiful, shiny piece of pottery, complete and whole. I wanted to be in control. I wanted to have control of the wheel, forming and shaping myself into who I thought I was supposed to be. Jesus was there, but I held Him at arms length. I wanted Him there, but I saw Him simply as a bystander. I was living for a God I treated as a back-up plan. So you can see why I was breaking. I wasn’t allowing myself to be held by the Father. Now, God could have chosen to take my makeshift “broken pot” of a life and toss it aside. But God, being full of grace and mercy, let me try and do things on my own until I had no more strength. I hit a couple of times on this race where I felt I simply could not go on. I was cracked pot trying to hold the weight of a rainstorm of problems. It did not take long for these things to leak through and affect me and those around me. I was overcome with more anxiety than I have ever experienced. I wasn’t loving the people around me well. I was working out of a place of “I can do it on my own.” Boy, was I wrong. My “pot” had shattered. But God never left. Following Jesus is humbling, but so rewarding. Following Jesus is a surrender. Over the course of this race, I have learned to surrender the seat and let Him take a hold of the wheel. I can finally breathe. HE has still be doing a work on my heart, but letting go of control has been the most freeing experience. He has been molding me and shaping into who He created me to be. He took my broken pieces and created something more beautiful than I could have ever imagined. And doesn’t simply toss out the broken pieces from my old self, He redeems them. He uses those hard, rough parts of our stories to bring glory to Him. People meet Jesus through the mess. They see the redemption because of the beauty that Jesus saw in my brokenness. Isaiah 45:9 says “Woe to those who quarrel with their Maker, those who are nothing but potsherds among the potsherds on the ground. Does the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you making?’ Does your work say, ‘The potter has no hands’?” (NIV) A potsherd is a broken piece of pottery. In our hands, a potsherd can only remind us of brokenness and cause us harm. In the Master Potters hands, He takes those pieces and uses them for something greater. 

I think that’s the best way to describe the race. I came in as a shattered piece of pottery that the Lord saw fit to redeem.  We are a flawed people with a perfect potter that sees the beauty in the mess. He sees our downfalls and failures and He redeems them. I come before Him with my jagged edges, feeling purposeless and unfixable, and He gives me a purpose. A purpose greater than anything I could’ve dreamt up for myself. I simply had to give up control of the wheel. 

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