The DeConstructed

A friend had a picture for me about a year ago of a heart bleeding intermingled with broken glass. Amidst the brokenness was the perosnal hope that I could reach in and fix the brokenness or at least save my heart. But I could not, only God could. Ultimately, the goal of the picture was to trust that the Lord would prevent the broken glass from entering the heart and causing further damage.

I think if I could sum up the recent past, it would be a continuation of this picture in which I, continuing to reach for my heart, end up with broken pieces of glass tearing through my hands and those pieces breaking into even smaller, finer pieces. The pieces that I did manage to pick up I swallowed in the hopes of putting a heart back into my chest and instead of that reforming taking place, I swallowed the broken glass further tearing through my throat and internal organs.

Penny & Sparrow has a lyric in one of their tracks called Patience, First that goes, “I’ve been so unfair to me, to love you like I have. Chimney lips and all, please come home.” The song seems to address a woman caught cheating but a desire on the part of the singer for her to return anyway. It is, I think how I feel about my current relationship with church, with the people of God, with my faith in humanity, and with myself. I feel my inadequate, imperfect love has been met with a seemingly worse neglect or adulterated rejection of my personhood. Whether I am the cheat or have been cheated, my eyes are too dim to see clearly. Everything is shadow.

I think, not only did I already feel beleaguered, fuel was added to the fire and there seemed a cruel apathy and accusation towards my brokenness as I sought for help. The crying out for help in picking up the pieces was met with impatience and frustration (lots of it my own). And that’s part of the reason why for the tonal shift that I believe is taking place within me, within my writing, within my own hopes. I have nothing within myself left to effectually give because I no longer know myself well enough to know what I’m giving.

What a strange place to be. You might wonder, why offer anything again. Why write at all? Why not remain silent and wait for justice, vindication or death? Maybe that would be the best course, but I don’t know if there is enough writing from this place.

I certainly don’t want to perpetuate a broken picture, but it is not my experience that even the simplest of journeys or dreams or loves get a pretty bow.

In fact I’m not even sure how some things get repaired. My toilet was leaking for the better part of a month and the past 2 days it stopped for no reason. My car had an electrical issue that made it seem like a transmission issue and it got fixed and works fine now. The painful rehabilitation of my knee left me with a stronger knee. With some things, the repair process is straightfoward but matters of heart and faith to me feel like I’m trusting in a Magic Spirit, and the impression I am often given especially in areas of forgiveness is that it should be offered with little to nothing changing. And that’s sad, but perhaps how it must be. The miracle is that we keep going while things remain broken, divided and deconstructed until it’s somehow rebuilt.

I have little energy left for the violent words and habits that those claiming authority have wielded, and hopefully in that i have no weaponry left in my own words, just reflections of hope that grace is perfected here in weakness.