This week is one of redemption and heartbreak. Over the weekend, I spent my time asking the Lord what He wants me to receive from this season, and that question led me to so many different places. Sometimes that meant sitting alone for an hour in silence, just trying to listen. Other times, it meant being surrounded by twenty people, all talking about different things, in a loud, chaotic manner. In both, I was able to find rest in the Lord. I found a place to breathe, to recuperate, and to process everything that’s been going on in my heart.
As ministry continued this week, I’ve experienced so many blessings. Leaning on God’s strength instead of my own is changing the way I love people. It’s making me gentler, more patient, and more grounded in overwhelming or difficult moments. Along with the beauty, God is also walking me through continual heartbreak.
Every day, I see children living lives that no child should have to live, yet somehow, they radiate this pure, unfiltered, contagious joy; it leaves me asking God, why?
Why would You allow this?
I see kids who eat one hot meal a day, kids who are orphans, kids who hit and scratch when someone’s done something “wrong” because that’s what’s normal at home. I see torn clothes, broken shoes, and innocent hearts that still find a reason to laugh. I can’t help but wrestle with the tension and contradiction of a just God in a deeply unjust world.
Before coming on this trip, I thought I understood what it meant to be broken for others, but this is different. This pain runs deeper. It’s the kind that shoots through your chest and leaves you unsure if you’re numb or feeling everything at once. It’s the kind that takes you to the bathroom floor, tears falling not for yourself, but for others whose pain you’re unable fix. There’s a helplessness in knowing that no matter how much I love or serve, it won’t erase what they’re going through. Yet, even there, God meets me. He sits with me in it. He’s teaching me how to walk through the ache instead of trying to run from it.
I’m currently reading Kingdom Journeys: Rediscovering Pilgrimage, The Lost Spiritual Discipline by Seth Barnes, and it’s been such a guide for me in this process, especially in understanding abandonment and brokenness. The book has been reminding me that questions and doubts are not failures of faith. God isn’t scared of my emotions, instead, He welcomes them. He actually desires me to bring everything to Him. He wants my confusion, anger, and heartbreak. He wants all of it because only when I bring Him my full self can He begin to heal me.
One line from the book hit me hard:
“Brokenness is what happens when something amiss is exposed and requires change. The change was needed all along; you just didn’t realize it.” As I prayed through that, I realized how often we hold onto selfishness without even noticing it. This week, God’s been showing me how many things I came here thinking I couldn’t live without. He’s teaching me that true life comes only after death: death to self, to comfort, to control, to my own desires.
Brokenness isn’t punishment, but it’s an open door to dependence. It draws me closer to God because when everything else falls apart, He’s the only thing left to hold onto and in that dependence, He redeems the pain. As I walk through the brokenness, not around it, I’m starting to obey with greater clarity. For me, that means letting go of the box I’ve put God in; the one where I’ve limited who He can be, how He can work, and what He can do. The more I let go of control, the more He reshapes my heart to look like His.
Through this heartbreak, I feel like God is inviting me to embrace it, to stop fighting it and trying to rush through it. My emotions aren’t too much for Him. He can handle my anger, my confusion, and my silence. He sits with me in all of it; in the tears, in the numbness, in the quiet moments when I can’t find words. In fact, most of the time, that’s where I find Him most.
Even in the pain, He keeps giving me blessings. He’s given me little glimpses of His goodness through laughter, hugs, and the wide smiles of the kids who are teaching me what faith really looks like. It’s a privilege to love them, even when it hurts because God’s heart breaks for them too, and He lets me carry a piece of that heart.
In the same book, Seth Barnes quotes Thomas Merton, who said, “There are seeds of grace flowing from God in every moment.”
Our only job is to be present enough to receive them and I think that begins here, by embracing brokenness and walking with Him through it.
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