Because of...

Grace. It is grace that comes into our brokenness and wraps around us like a healing balm. It softens the rough edges and creates a safe barrier between the sharp barbs of our souls and those that surround us. As I’ve struggled to find who I am and what God is calling me to during this time of transition, I have misheard his whisper, the one that gently guides us in the right direction. This has shattered my confidence, not in God’s ability to speak, but in my ability to hear. In the brokenness that results from this paralyzing fear there is love. That love is the grace that mends and brings wholeness where there is none on our part, where in our souls only emptiness is felt, yet grace makes us complete even as we lack. This grace does not always lead to the sensation of wholeness, but we are full nonetheless.
I don’t pretend to understand either the depth of my brokenness, or that of the grace that fills in the gaps. While the perspective that time and fuller views of the bigger picture will bring will help me to comprehend what has happened in this time of my life, and what it is that I need to take from it, I don’t think my understanding is the point. There are deep changes happening in me right now. Undercurrents that were so heavily defended or hidden, that only such raw disappointment and hurt were going to get through into the far reaches of my soul. It is these places that grace needed to find its way and yet, consciously or not, I would not permit it to be there. I do not claim that God caused certain situations in order that I might learn new lessons. However, I do know that grace will not pass up opportunities to more deeply move into the innermost areas of our being, and there are times that only in our being broken is grace able to penetrate to these depths. This is not because Jesus is not able to reach these places, when in fact he is already there. But Jesus will not force his influence where we do not allow for grace’s entry.
Behold, he stands at the door and knocks, and while we may call out with the invitation to enter we hardly mean it. Then something happens to rock our homes to the foundations, and the doors are thrown off their hinges and our muffled cries for Jesus to come in are met with his gentle touch of healing. The gentle touch that is… grace.