Beauty of Brokenness

As much as it stinks...somethings are taught best to us when we're lonely. It is in my own loneliness this present moment that He is revealing His holiness to me.

Working nights at the hospital really puts a damper on my social life. I work all night and sleep all day. It is hard to do anything between work and sleeping especially when I'm doing a twelve hour shift because I have to show up to the hospital just a few hours after I've woken up.

I am an extrovert. An extrovert, by definition is: people that are interested in what's happening outside themselves: their surroundings, people, noises. Extroverts don't tend to enjoy spending time alone, and they get their energy from other people. A significant extroverted personality trait is that energy flows outward. Extroverts often understand a problem better when they can talk out loud about it and hear what others have to say.....me to a T huh?

I thrive off of the interaction with other people. People really are my passion, that is why I chose the profession I did. I love joking with people, talking with people, caring for them, and ultimately just doing my best to love well. However, the downside to this is that I am a people pleaser. I seek approval from other people and my identity can very quickly become placed in the opinions of other people and my worth becomes wrapped around others actions towards me. Not good.

Yesterday, all this came crashing down on me. Physically, I felt like a train wreck. My body has been adjusting off and on to working nights one week to working days the next week. And yesterday I was feeling it. AND God, right now is breaking me of me. The source of this brokenness is not based around any situation or event in my life but really just of God growing me to be more and more the woman He created me to be.

I am a runner. So much of how I relate to things goes back to my mindset of running. There is no focus I have like when I am running and I push myself harder when I am running than I do at just about any other time. I am always pushing myself, striving for more. Just a few more feet, just one quarter of a mile....running harder and harder and faster to reach where I want to be. Striving on and on and on. If something is standing in my way I change my route. But things have changed.

For once, I am being forced to BE. I am too tired to run. Too weak. I'm lacking the stamina I once had to fight and turn and run down another road. All other routes are being shut down. I have no other choice than to be right here, right now, growing through this brokenness and in that growing up in Him.

There is a David Crowder song called "Only You"...and it came on my iPod as I was driving to work yesterday. Now yesterday whilst driving to work I hit a low point, I didn't think I could handle working the next twelve hours feeling the way I was feeling and this song came on. Some of the lyrics go: Take my fret, take my fear All I have, I’m leaving here Be all my hopes, be all my dreams You're my delights, be my everything And It’s just you and me here now
Only you and me here now
 ....by the end of the song, tears were streaming down my face as I realize that He demanding all of me because He loves me. And He loves me too much to keep me where I am. In all of this, He provides what we need when we need it and I take extreme comfort in the fact that He is taking care of me.

Brokenness is beautiful.
In this brokenness, I am being beckoned. Beckoned to leave myself behind. Beckoned to surrender.
A surrender that will lead to
Reckless Abandon