You are Becoming

You are becoming.

That’s what life is, if we so choose it, a series of steps we take on our way to becoming. Oddly, the more we are hurt, the more we become. The more we are broken, the more we become. And as the years pass, I realize the more we are broken, the more we are whole.

Strange, really. And an irony I would’ve been prepared to argue until a few years ago. How can one be broken and whole at the same time? It certainly doesn’t seem logical. It certainly doesn’t seem to make any kind of sense. It isn’t orderly, but then what in life really is?

Since childhood, I’ve had a series of pictures in my mind of how life would be. There was a logical order to these pictures; an order that made sense. It seems pretty simple through the eyes of adolescence, doesn’t it? School, graduate, more school, boyfriend, job, promotion at job, get engaged, get married, buy a house, get a dog, more promotions, have a kid, make more money, buy a new house, have another kid…and so on. Through it all, you’re basked in the glow of pure joy and happiness.

Until you aren’t.

Suddenly you realize your plan, the one once so steady under your feet, has been thrown up in the air, its pieces scattering around you like a stack of loose pictures. You are broken. Yet, you are becoming.

Throughout our lives, our hearts break into a million little pieces for a variety of reasons. We curl up in a ball. We cry. We sit in darkness, hiding from the world, while raising our hands to Heaven, asking ‘why’.

We are broken. Yet, becoming. It’s hard to see, let alone acknowledge, in the moment.

Order, plans, pictures of perfection feel like bliss. Many of us think we are happier when we know what to expect. Yet oddly, when life does follow the plan, we may find ourselves bored. Expectant. And ungrateful. And then what? Then sometimes we forget to listen. We may be less open, unwilling to make any changes for fear of disrupting our plan.

I’m not advocating or wishing a life riddled with pain and hurt. I’m not asking to live a life broken, yet the reality is, we all do. Like everyone else, I’m just trying to find a way through it all. Learning how to cope, grow, and become.

As the years pass and the pictures scatter, I am learning to embrace the moments when order is upended. And I am hoping through it all, when I raise my hands to Heaven, I stop asking ‘why’ and start whispering, ‘I am listening. With Him, I am whole’.

Because I am broken, yet becoming.