It seems as if everywhere I turn lately I see it.

Taking on different forms and different names, but I see it just the same. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of it head on, other times a peripheral vision of it. At other times I can feel it, sneaking up on me.  It taps me on the shoulder and then runs and hides. Like a young friend initiating a game with me. Except it’s a game that I don’t want to play and it is no friend of mine.

It sits in the waiting room of the doctor’s office,  lounges on the couch in the family room, waits in line at the grocery store and even makes an appearance on the evening news. It’s no respecter of age, race or religion.  It’s a world traveler in many regards.

Following the tracks it leaves behind would lead you to a fracture point.  A beginning point, however small, of where it all began.

Brokenness.

It surrounds us.

I saw it on the images that plastered my television screen last night. I saw it in the face of a man who lost multiple friends  & coworkers in California yesterday. I don’t know him. I have never even seen his face before,  but it didn’t feel distant or removed. It felt real and honest and incredibly close.

I hear it in the conversations I have with friends struggling with issues in their parenting, their marriages, their friendships.  Real issues that have them barely holding on, struggling with decisions and wrestling with their faith.

I felt the sting of it as I cried with my childhood friend on the phone last night whose dad lost his battle with cancer yesterday afternoon. She has lost both her parents to cancer in less than 2 years. She’s 38, the same age as me, and  I cannot imagine walking through life at this age without either of my parents.

I saw it in the eyes of my oldest son last night as he shared his heart with me about a friend whose family is going through a divorce. He’s scared of it, the brokenness.

Aren’t we all?

It can be so very real and so very heavy.
And it likes to tell us stories. It spins tall tales of how we are alone in our brokenness. Of how nobody else can understand what we’re going through. It seeks to isolate. It whispers that we are not enough, that we are failures and unloveable. It seeks to seize us with fear. It paints a picture so bleak we are unable to see past it. It has an uncanny ability to cloud our perspective and cast shadows of doubt over us.  It wants to paint everything in a template of grey and gloom. It seeks to fill our hearts with despair and depression. 

But what if the word brokenness had multiple meanings? What if brokenness also meant invitation? An invitation to share our brokenness.

Our brokenness shows us our need. A need we all have.  A need for mending, for reconciliation, for redemption.  A need that points us to our Savior,  Emmanuel,  God with us. A love that came down from heaven and took on the form of a baby that he might be, in every sense of the word, our Emmanuel.

The light that is shed on our brokenness points us to the Light that if we follow, will lead us through the darkness. It will lead us through and out. It will lead us to a place where the brokenness is displaced, expelled by the Love, the Light of the World that came down for us.

And as we are vulnerable about our brokenness we have the unique ability to share the hope we have with a lost and hurting world. This Christmas season let’s be honest and vulnerable.  Let’s be willing to meet people in the middle of their brokenness and share ours with them as well.   Let’s also point them towards the hope that we have in our Savior, in baby Jesus, in our Emmanuel God with us. Let’s let our brokenness lead the way to our redemption.