Living With My Brokenness

There are times when I feel like I have an emptiness inside me, a gap I just can’t seem to fill with anything. I feel lonely and empty. I can surround my self with a multitude of activities to keep myself occupied. None of them help though. Have you ever felt that way? I’m sure lots of people do. Whenever I feel like this, and nothing else seems to be working, I try praying. I must admit, it can be a great help.
Prayer helps to open you up to something that can help you even more. God’s everlasting and constant love. I don’t know about you, but I often find that I forget to pray. I just let the void, the loneliness, grow and grow until it seems to be so big that it hurts. It seems like it shall never again go away. It’s like it has made a nest inside of me, like it has made a home inside of me—constantly reminding me that it is there and that it has no intention to leave.
An unknown, yet still wise, person once said “God understands our prayers even when we can't find the words to say them.” Perhaps in these times, when we can’t find the words to pray, or forget to pray to God, maybe we don’t need to say anything. Maybe, just maybe, all we need to do is reach out to the Heavenly Father, the Heavenly Mother, and God will take us in His loving arms in a huge hug and sooth our troubled spirits.
What if that doesn’t seem to work, though? What if we can’t seem to feel that loving, tender touch? Do you often go searching for God, to ask Him to help you? Of course, some people claim to have found God in these instances. Another anonymous person once said, “Some people talk about finding God—as if He could get lost.” No, God doesn’t get lost. But we feel lost. Or at least I know that I do. As I’ve written before, I often feel like a puzzle, broken and scattered about and I just can’t seem to put myself back together again.
Amethyst Snow-Rivers remarked, “When we can't piece together the puzzle of our own lives, remember the best view of a puzzle is from above.  Let Him help put you together.” Perhaps if we cannot ‘find God’, we should let God find us. We can give God a call, a cry out with our soul to God. I think that when he receives this calling cry, He’ll come to us with a box in hand. With a soft, kind and caring smile He’ll kneel next to us and say in a gentle and loving voice say, “My child, my dear child, I have heard you calling to me. And look! Do you see what I have? I have those missing puzzle pieces. I can help you to become whole once more. Do not worry…I am here and I love you so very much.”
I have just finished a week at Kairos 2008, which is an event for young adults in the United Church of Canada from across the country to get together and live in a week of worship, discernment, and community. It is a profound experience. With this group of wonderful and amazing people I have found the true meaning of what it is for God to put a single piece of the puzzle back. Even if we can’t see it right away, He answers our prayers. I’ve learned that this week. Before and on my way to Kairos, I found myself feeling very empty and much like a broken spirit.
I can never claim that I’m not still a broken spirit, I think I always will be. On my way to this event, I prayed to God and asked Him to help me feel whole and understand why I am living. And through this event, one or two things that I have suffered in my life have come to surface, as I am sure God intended. For instance, I’ve dealt with having practically no presence of my father during most of my life. I’ve never lived with him, but I have met him. He cut off all communications with me when I was at the age of about, I’ll say, six. With all these amazing people, though, I’ve discovered something. I’ve discovered that I don’t need my father. I don’t know if ever need him. Someday I may have closure, but until then, I’m happy with the extended family that I have grown into through this event and events like this.
I have felt love and acceptance here…enough to fill that void and to know I am loved, that I am good enough, no matter how inadequate I have felt because of my father’s absence; no matter how imperfect or unworthy I have felt because of it. I now know what it means to have your prayers answered. I know what it means to feel loved and accepted for who I am in all of my brokenness. All that I can do now is give the Lord thankful praise as tears stream down my face. It is the happiest I have been in the longest time.
Thank you Heavenly Father…Heavenly Mother. I may not be perfect, but with Your grace I can be perfectly happy.
Amen.
-Nico Anderson