I am a closed off person. I admit it. My tendencies are to keep the deepest parts of me to myself. It is hard for me to share the dark and the ugly of who I am. I have spent many hours reflecting on why this is. Is it because I am introverted and just don't share well? I don't think so, for I am a person who has no problem talking to others. Is it because I am prideful? This is possible, because I fear what people will think of me if they knew. Yet, although pride is a good starting point for understanding where this tendency comes from, it points to something deeper. It shows a fight that I have to accept that I am a broken person. 

Brokenness is not easy to admit. Not many of us like to admit that we are fundamentally flawed. We like to talk ourselves into believing that we can fix ourselves, or that "we aren't that bad". We paint over our problems, struggles, habits, addictions, as if they normative and the way it is supposed to be as humans. In talking to others, when we do exert the courage needed, we many times are confronted with the response, "that is just what it means to be a man/woman/human," as if the broken parts of us are not really broken, but the way we were made. 

We know better than this though. Deep down we know this isn't true. Deep down we feel that there should be more than living in our struggles. Our ears perk at the faint whispers of the possibility of victory. However, as paradoxical as it seems, the first step towards that victory is admitting we are utterly broken and need the unbroken one. 

A.W. Tozer reminds us that "Deliverance can come to us only by the defeat of our old life. Safety and peace come only after we have been forced to our knees. God rescues us by breaking us, by shattering our strength and wiping out our resistance." We don't usually like our strength shattered. We tend to live lives in ways to protect ourselves from this. Our life actions show that our priorities are to become stronger, more qualified, financially insulated, self sufficient beings that are protected from being "shattered" or "wiped out". 

Yet Jesus reminds us that "Blessed are the poor in spirit..", or those that recognize their utter helplessness/brokenness/neediness. Lord help me to be truthful to you and others, that apart from you I am a mess....and let us all see that in our weakness, your strength comes through.