Wisdom from the Trenches

We live in a broken world. I think I established the bleakness of our situation in my last post, so I won’t be going there again today. Jesus told us that in this broken world we would have trouble. He didn’t tell us not to worry because he would fix everything to our satisfaction. He told us to take heart because he has overcome the world – and he promised to always be with us. 

I was once driving down the freeway when a pebble, picked up by a semi’s tire, flew into the air and hit my windshield. Obviously, I reacted as if a boulder had hit me because the sound jolted me from serene silence, frightening me a great deal. I then became angry because my perfect cocoon now had a nasty little ding in it. My mind immediately began to tally the hours I would now need to spend making phone calls so that insurance could fix my windshield. My life had been impacted by something beyond my control. The lens through which I view the world had been broken.

Time passed, and I took less and less notice of the damage and so, I didn’t get it fixed. I guess I was hoping it would just disappear or, bare minimum, not affect my life a great deal more. The ding, however, began to spread hairline fractures across my windshield. This went virtually unnoticed by busy little me (or, more accurately, actively avoided by me) until one of those cracks zigzagged its way into my direct line of sight. It shocked me that I had been oblivious for so long that the extent of damage the tiny little imperfection had eventually done to my car had affected the entire windshield. And then, the sun glinted off the crack and momentarily blinded me while I was driving. That little issue had become dangerous and I blamed myself. It angered me that I had let the problem go from what would have been a simple, tiny filling to this level of extreme! I called insurance and a repair company. The repair company ripped the entire broken windshield off my car and painstakingly attached a new one in its place. Problem solved. Lesson learned.

Or so I thought. Years later, I was driving along when my peaceful existence was yet again shattered by a pebble that smacked me right in the middle of the windshield, causing another tiny ding. I immediately took my vehicle to the auto glass repair company, expecting a windshield replacement. I turned the keys over to the expert, told him the situation, and then said, “I need the windshield replaced.” Much to my surprise, the technician simply filled the ding with a strong substance, reinforcing the glass, and sent me on my way. But I still notice the barely visible ding embedded in the glass to this day! It is a constant reminder to drive more carefully by keeping my distance from the backs of semi trucks – the deeper issue which actually caused the breaks in both windshields. 

Since the fall, our world continues to unravel. It’s like the original, little ding on our windshield that continues to spread and grow. We notice the break when it works its way into our lives and compromises our seemingly perfect view of life. We experience betrayal when our husband looks at porn or has an affair. We struggle with medical conditions that won’t go away. We mourn when our child walks away from God to become an addict. We fear when faced with a job loss. We rage when we hear about the sex slavery that still exists down the street from our home. We crumble when we are victims of criminal acts. We are saddened when we receive news that is the opposite of what we would like to hear. Somewhere, there was a ding in life that went unnoticed until the evidence was too obvious to further ignore. 

These are normal, human reactions to unjust or difficult situations…situations we cannot avoid because we live in a broken world. Situations we are powerless to fix. Our view of what the fix to our broken situation is might not be the answer we truly need because God is aware of deeper issues that need addressing. And herein lies the problem: we see at surface level and think we know better than the expert. We tell the expert how to fix it, as if the only acceptable answer is one contrived by us. We become frustrated when the expert doesn’t follow “The Plan”. We begin to doubt when the path takes a detour. We try to work our magic so that we can overcome the world, so that we can stand victorious, so that we appear flawless! We want a King to come in with sword drawn and beat our enemy into submission, not a servant leader who washes our feet and sits with us in our present circumstances.

If we’re waiting on our version of an answer to our current situation and unwilling to accept the answer we’ve been given, we haven’t changed much from those who lived during Old and New Testament times. In this life, we will have trouble, but GOD has overcome the world in His own way, with His own plan. It is not by accident that we are who we are or we are where we are. God might not have directly caused or allowed it (He certainly does not instigate crime or desire us to suffer), but He is with us, never shocked by our circumstances and unsurprised by our visceral responses. 

I am not proud to admit this, but years ago, I raged at God for not healing me of every evidence of PTSD. I didn’t understand at the time that sometimes, He completely heals…and sometimes, He pours His grace into the weakness and His grace is sufficient to strengthen the ding in our lives. God tenderly picks up the pieces of our lives and holds them in His competent hands, restoring some broken parts of our lives to better than ever before and reinforcing other areas to continue on as broken vessels. Both solutions are evidence of His goodness. He does this to showcase His power in our daily lives to a world that remains broken and continues to break, in constant need of a Savior who understands the deeper issues. 

We see the dings in our lives and we often want to be finished with them, but God often uses them to strengthen our purpose and character in this life. Restoration of what shattered in our lives is a blessing…but sadly, can also lead us to forget. There is a saying that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. This was exactly the case with my fully replaced windshield. Over time, I forgot the lesson entirely and returned to following semi trucks too closely on the road. BUT – those reinforced areas of our lives can serve as ever-present reminders of life gone wrong, of the expert who stepped in to help us, and of our need to slow down and live intentionally every moment of our lives. It can also help others who struggle by showing them it is possible to weather adversity and come through not unscathed, but stronger. Our imperfections, if we are willing to be vulnerable, show others that they are not alone. When we allow others to see the dings that we still carry on our journey through life, we become more empathetic towards others and step into living more purposeful lives. 

If I have learned anything living with chronic depression and PTSD, it is this: Broken does not mean irredeemable, but just like back in Jesus’ day when a servant leader was born to pay the ultimate price for our sin instead of coming down to Earth to rule with an iron fist, redemption often does not always look the way the world expects.