A Listening Ear

I have been in a very dark place for two years. My soul has been in despair because my insides are broken. My heart, my soul, my spirit, my strength has been broken. When I graduated college my dreams broke which ultimately broke my heart. The identity that I had built for twenty years broke.

I wallowed in my broken identity. I searched the five stages of grief to try and work through my sorrow. I first denied my brokenness by trying to form my ministry around my broken identity. I did this through demanding expectations and judgmental teaching. I was so clouded by denial that I could not see the wound I was creating within the ministry I was given.

I then felt the anger seep into my spirituality and into my life. I took my anger out on my loving husband and my loving God. I blamed my husband for tricking me into marrying him and for making me move away from everyone I knew and loved. I felt betrayed and angry because it was his fault for my broken identity. I blamed my loving God by calling him indifferent and uninvolved. I did not believe that a "loving" God would put me in such a despairing place. How could my God betray me! How could this God place me in such a miserable place?

I then bargained for my old identity back. I told God that I would do anything if he would free me from my own broken despair. I tried to get God to release me from my despair. I no longer cared about my ministry or about my gifts. I wanted to be free from this ache within my own soul. I longed to feel loved again, I longed to feel anything other than the despair that was with me at all times. I wanted to be free of the responsibility of growing and the responsibility of being a Christ follower. I bargained with God and pleaded with God to set me free from this life of burden. I just wanted my brokenness and I wanted to be left alone in my brokenness. I longed to sit in my self pity and my despair and be left completely alone. I tried to get God to let me live my broken life in exchange for my surrender.

Then I realized that my bargaining was not going to work. God was not going to let me live in my own dying brokenness. God wanted me to accept my broken identity and to move to a new place of completion. I refused to accept my brokenness and I sank into a deep depression. I so craved to die in my own brokenness. I carried this depression in every single part of my life. I came home from work and crawled into bed and wept. I wept my own death. I wept my brokenness and misunderstandings. I wept for my husband who was speechless. The forming of my depression has lasted two years. It officially ended my first day of seminary.

I have finally accepted and repented of my brokenness. I have repented of my longing to be put to death along with my broken identity. I have finally come to accept the "loving" God that I had so resented. This loving God longs for me to feel the freedom of completion rather than the death of slavery. This freedom has brought me into a deep humility. A humility that is now shaping how I listen to God and to everyone around me. A humility that I pray never abandons my heart because it has opened my ears up to the Good news.