The other day, my car wouldn’t start. It needed a jump, several times in a row. Not wanting to visit the mechanic and pay a fee, I stopped by the auto store for a free diagnosis (did you know they do that?). When I opened the hood, the battery cable was smoking. As in, blackened cable, smoke, the whole nine. I was likely a few minutes shy of an engine fire.
The battery was broken which broke the cable. Or the cable went bad and broke the battery. Some part wasn’t fulfilling its function, or something disconnected that kept the whole from moving forward. I’m not a mechanic, so I’m not sure which, I just know a spliced cable repaired with the help of my High School Junior and a new battery later, and my battery-brokenness was repaired.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we were like that?
Eugene Peterson argued that our metaphors matter. Talking about humans in a mechanistic way (for example, “broken”, “fixed”) cheapens and diminishes the human experience.
Agreed. We are not machines.
So to clarify, we’re talking here about organic breaks.
The bones of life.
The ligaments of connection.
Hearts.
Minds.
Relationships.
A broken part needs the one-time action of repair that fixes the break.
A broken person needs the process of healing that takes time and work and patience.
In other words, we cannot be fixed.
But we can be healed.
This is a kind of ‘gospel’. If you are attempting to fix something broken in you, it won’t work, you’ll only be frustrated, and nothing will change. So receive this good news about your healing; you aren’t made that way. You need a healing protocol, not a fix-it appointment.
Herman Melville named it. “I say: and Heaven have mercy on us all—Presbyterians and Pagans alike—for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.”
Ask anyone in a body who’s aware of it if everything functions properly. Their will response will tell you that 'broken' is in some sense the human predicament.* All flesh is like grass—easily cut, mowed, scalped, burned, scorched, dug up.
There are too many ways to be broken to recite. Relationships break. You reach your breaking point. There is a mental break. Someone puts on the brakes. You feel something break in you. Your heart breaks. Your efforts don’t work and you feel broken. Trust is broken. The effort you gave leaves you broken in pieces.
Because healing is a process, here are four actions to aid the healing. Think of it as a healing protocol for the soul, if you will.
You can spend your time parsing the pain. There is a place and time for that. Therapy is a gift. This is a call to take specific action on your own behalf.
Welcome time
Managing expectations is part of healing. Thinking a long-term wound of the heart, a relationship, will heal quickly is a recipe for the frustration of unmet expectation. Welcoming time as an ally—rather than enemy—of healing promotes healing. We hurt when we are broken. We want the hurt to stop. Like with our body, the more severe the break, the longer the healing takes. Time doesn't do the healing, but it is an aid to it.
Persevere
Keep going. What happened over time won’t heal overnight. It takes concentrated attention and investment of time to see healing happen. That broken leg takes a year. Why burden yourself thinking your broken heart will take less? Perseverance is endurance. If you can’t see to the end, see to a milestone just ahead. Churchill to England is the recitation of perseverance: “Never, no never, no never give up.”
Give
You have no control over what happened in the past. This includes the things you did or did not do that contributed to or were less than helpful in bringing about healing! What is behind you is gone. What you can do is give what’s required in the present moment. You can’t control someone else's contribution, but you can give yours. Start here: Give what you needed at the time.
Forgive
Yourself. Them. The circumstance. Life. God. The people who watched it happen. The ones who tried to help but made it worse. Read Lewis Smedes’ book on forgiving to do some good digging in your soul, but forgive. Let them go. Evict the past as a squatter in your mind. Stop drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die (says Anne Lamott). Move on to better ground, the load you are carrying is too much. Jesus commands it because in it is your freedom.
I’ve found it helpful when I need to take action to phrase carefully what I need, then recite it out loud to my heart before God for as long as I need to take action. It lets me do it as I say it and puts courage in me to get on with it.
Here’s a template.
"Time, I was angry at you, thinking you were in my way, but now I see you are one of my best allies. I welcome you as a gift from God to help me with the healing. I choose to keep going until I see the healing. I won’t quit. I will give what I needed, knowing I cannot control what anyone else does, but I will add my gift regardless. And in Jesus’ name, I forgive—any and all, even through clenched jaw and tears."
If you are a Christian, you have in your arsenal a secret weapon for your broken places: The Gospel. And it's this. God welcomed time, stepped into it in fact. In his life, death, and resurrection, God stepped into our moment. And in that time, God did not give up on you. He did not quit. He gave all that was required, and then infinitely more, and forgave and forgives so you can too.
The Gospel isn’t the ‘get out of jail free’ card you hold in Monopoly for when you need it, while you busy your actual days with building your empire on the board of life, pushing your brokenness into a corner.
The Gospel is the message that the entire board of life is God’s in the first place, that he made it, redeems it, brings healing to the people who play it, and has a better board coming when all will be healed.
Beloved, the time has come. The Kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe this good news.
*Sin is the human condition.
Brokenness is the human predicament.
Pastor Scott Marshall, Wichita First Church of the Nazarene