[have you noticed that?]
A well-intentioned friend once said to me, "When you're feeling sad, all you have to do to make yourself feel better is smile. Even if it's a fake smile, it still releases the same endorphins that real smiles release, and before you know it, your fake smile will become a real smile."
And while the science nerd in me finds that to be fascinating, can it possibly be healthy?
To cure sadness, we should simply fake happiness until we start actually feeling happy?
If that's the case, we should probably inform every counseling center in America that they're no longer needed. And heck, while we're at it, we should tell people not to give hugs when people are down: It unnecessarily spreads germs.
Of course this isn't true.
(well, i mean, maybe the endorphins thing is accurate. i haven't fact-checked that.)
But to emerge from a state of sadness | brokenness | disappointment --it'll take a lot more than releasing good vibes from your facial muscles.
The deeper question remains, though:
Why are we so desperate to move away from this state of brokenness?
Has our culture taught us so unilaterally that brokenness is bad, that we can't bear to accept the emotions we're genuinely feeling? That we need to quickly bandage up any wounds we suffer in order to become a "whole person"? That brokenness is a sign that there's something wrong with us?
But. What if that wounded state is the place that helps us grow the most?
Over the past couple weeks, I've been stuck on this concept.
It seems to me that when I'm the most broken, I'm also the most myself: I don't have mental or emotional energy to smooth off the rough edges, my personality has no choice but to come out in its rawest form.
When I'm feeling broken, I'm more desperate for wisdom and truth.
And that feeling of desperateness leads me to seek out the only true constant in my life: I lean on God so heavily in these broken hours.
It's in my brokenness that I live a life of unabashed dependency on God. The life that creates the archetype for how I should always be living.
To be strong all the time is perhaps the most unhealthy goal one can have.
The power of Christ is made perfect in our weakness [2 Corinthians 12:9]; our marriage to the world is exemplified in our desire to fix our own brokenness.
This morning I was sitting in church, the notion of brokenness tumbling around in my head. The worship band began to play a well-worn praise chorus written by Brooke Fraser called Hosanna.
I absently sang the lyrics of the first couple verses and choruses, so familiar that they came out of my mouth almost automatically.
As I found myself singing along with the bridge, though, the words' juxtaposition grabbed my attention:
heal my heart and make it clean
followed almost immediately by,
break my heart for what breaks Yours
I stopped singing as I realized the two things the song asked for were healing and brokenness.
Are they one and the same?
Is it only through acknowledging brokenness that true healing can occur?
After all, sometimes when things seem to be falling apart, they may actually be falling into place.
If we've already placed a bandage over what is broken, we aren't allowing the broken pieces to fall where they need to.
When we "put on a happy face" despite our brokenness, we resist the promise made to us:
I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. [Ezekiel 36:26]
We aren't the ones who create that new heart. We aren't a people who have the power to form renewed spirits.
This new heart and new spirit is the one that begins to form only after our existing heart and spirit break.
In our brokenness, we are made whole, and He is made perfect.
All the walls you've built up are just glass on the outside
So let them fall down.
There's freedom waiting in the sound when you let your walls fall down.
This is where the healing begins.
[Healing Begins, Tenth Avenue North]
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