I have lived my life within a church. From vbs to Sunday
school to Lads to Leaders. From youth group to church camp to fireside
devotionals. I have been surrounded by this God-ordained institution.
And the church that I attend now? An incredible blessing.
That place, those people. It has truly changed my heart.
And last Sunday when I shared my story with my church, I saw
a church that was alive. Raised hands, Amens, and Spirit-filled faces. What a
blessing to share my story, when my story merged with theirs. I prayed for the
story that has been written on my heart to reach one person. Just one heart.
And God is so faithful. When we step out of the way, when we stop writing our own stories for
ourselves, God does incredible things.
(I shared a version of
my broken arms/broken heart story that has been posted in various forms
on my blog. The version that I shared on Sunday is included at the bottom of
this blog).
But I have also been surrounded by something else – by a
body of believers. A cloud of witnesses. A church of friends as I like to call
them. And oh, do I have a church.
I live my life within a church of friends. People who speak truth into my life. People whose hearts I
know intimately and people who know my own heart just as well. My core group of
friends who are so close to my heart that, I promise you, the Holy Spirit has
connected our hearts with unbreakable bonds. They text me at the exact moment
that I am doubting myself to tell me that I am beautiful and worthy. They call
me on nights that I feel lonely to tell me that I am dearly loved. I come home
from work on a really bad day to find a hand written letter in my mail box.
Incredible. The reason why they are my church is not because I have spent more
time with them than other friends (which might be true). It’s not because of
the fun trips that we’ve had (
which we have had) or the adventures we’ve
been on together (
which we have done) or the countless dinners we have
shared around a table together (
which happens every week). Those things
make us friends. Best friends. But we have shared our lives
and our hearts with
each other. We have laid our hearts bare. We have allowed our struggles to
become our stories and allowed those stories to speak Truth into each other’s
lives. What a blessing my church of friends has been – to know that you are
never walking on this journey alone. To know that you were brought into
relationship
for such a time as this. That’s
what makes us more than friends - a church of friends.
Broken Arms, Broken Hearts
I’m a big time dreamer.
I’m not just talking about goals and ambitions – that’s true too. But I’m a big
time dreamer… in my sleep.
In the past couple of
years I’ve developed a condition known as non-REM parasomnia. What happens is
that my brain can no longer filter out what it should and should not be
responding to when I’m asleep. This means that I do two things. I will repeat
any normal, household, every day task in my sleep. Cooking, cleaning, doing
laundry, getting dressed, taking a shower, moving furniture… just any really
practical, functional item to be doing in your sleep.
But I do something
else, too. I act out what it is that I’m doing in my dreams. My most notorious
example of this happened a little over a year ago when I was asleep on my
sister’s pull out couch at her home in Indiana. I had just fallen asleep when
before I know it I’m on a raft in the middle of a raging river. I’m trying to
survive the rapids when a black snake with glowing yellow eyes starts to get on
my raft. I panic, but then look to my left and see another raft going upstream.
I get on my hands and knees and count one two three. And I jump as hard as I
can from one raft to the other.
And then I wake up on
the floor.
Because in my dream
when I am jumping raft to raft, in real life I jumped from my bed onto the
floor.
I woke up the instant I
hit the ground. I stood up and thought, “I can’t believe I jumped out of bed
again.”
And then I thought, “I
can’t move my arm.”
When I landed on the
ground on my hands and knees all of my weight had gone onto my left arm and I
actually ended up breaking the bone in my arm.
I had to have surgery
the next day to repair the broken bone. I was really nervous because I had
never had surgery or been put to sleep before. The doctor was great. He came in
and went through his normal routine of “You’re fine. I do this all the time.
Everything will be great.” But then he did the most important thing that
happened to me that day. He bent down, looked me in the eye, and signed his
name on my arm right where he was about to do surgery. It’s as if he were
saying, “This arm? This broken one? It hurts so bad and I know it will hurt
worse before it feels better, but it will feel better. I promise! I know this
because arms are my thing. I fix broken arms and I make them just like new
every single time. Your arm is broken now, but it will be healed. I know this
because it has my name written all over it.”
This is beautiful to me
because we are all broken in other ways too. Our hearts are broken from the
loneliness or the shame or the eating disorder or the alcoholism or the consumerism
or whatever it is that is taking up a part of our heart that Jesus is dying to
fill. That Jesus did die to fill. And yes, we are a broken people, but our
stories do not end in brokenness because we have a great Healer. A Healer who
enters into our broken world in the form of a carpenter, a cross, a
crucifixion, and an empty cave to offer us redemption, salvation, and healing.
A God who looks down, sees our broken heart, and He signs His name on our
hearts. And He says, “This heart? This broken one? It hurts so bad and I know
it will hurt worse before it feels better, but it will get better. I promise! I
know this because hearts are my thing. I fix broken hearts and I make them just
like new every single time. Your heart is broken now, but it will be healed. I
know this because it has my name written all over it.”
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