A few months ago, I met my friend out for breakfast. My friend took a sip of his coffee and looked at me with a serious, contemplative look. He said, “You know, we are all broken.” I stopped chewing my mouthful of eggs and instead started to digest his phrase. I pondered that phrase for many weeks, and I concluded that our society needs to accept being broken. But, how do we accept ourselves as being broken?
Let’s face it, we are all broken in some way, shape, or form. We all have suffered from some sort of depression, anxiety, worry, neglect, addiction, loss, or pain (insert any negative emotion or feeling in this sentence).
All of us have made mistakes. We have caused intentional or unintentional harm to others. Bad things have happened to all of us. No one can deny the fact that we are living with some sort of brokenness.
So, we KNOW that we are broken. However, do we really SEE ourselves as broken? Are we trying to see ourselves in a broken light so we can improve ourselves and our relationships? When we look into a mirror, what do we see? Do we see the person looking back at us with some imperfections?
So, we KNOW that we are broken. We SEE that we are broken. However, have we truly ACCEPTED being broken?
Here are seven genuine reasons how to accept being broken:
1) Want to Accept Being Broken? Then Walk Into the Fear
If we truly want to accept our brokenness, then we need to “walk into the fear.” Whether it was something terrible from childhood or yesterday’s conversation with a boss that made us feel deflated, brokenness lives in our minds and hearts every day. In short, the first step in accepting our pain is to confront it and not ignore it.
How do we “walk into the fear”? We walk with courage knowing that this is the journey towards healing our wounds. The true way for acceptance is having faith in ourselves, in God, and the journey. It can be easy to ignore our pain, but it can be really hard to face the pain. Truthfully, the only way to accept our imperfections is by confronting them.
2) How Do We Stop the Monsters? It Starts by Forgiving Ourselves
Perhaps our childhood monsters that lived under our bed were real. In fact, maybe they never truly went away.
Once we walk into the fear, we need to face the demons of our past. With a strong desire for forgiveness, we can move forward in the present. By not forgiving the past, we will continue to repeat the same behavior when emotions are triggered. Forgiving our brokenness is incredibly important in accepting ourselves as who we are.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” 2 Corinthians 5:17-18
From a personal level, forgiving ourselves leads to an emotional cleansing. All that baggage from the past needs to be dealt with and healed. From a spiritual level, turning it over to God clears the way for us to move forward in our journey of life.
3) Stop Holding on to That Anger; Start Forgiving Others
When we continue to hold that grudge or turn our back, we are simply storing negative energy. The negative energy inside us continues to grow. When the next person or situation inflames us, that bad energy simply piles up on top of our old bad energy.
In essence, we need to clear and clean out the garbage in our trashcan. The garbage of our life is the stored anger and hurt. By not emptying the trashcan, the garbage will simply overflow. And, when the garbage spills over, it starts to fill up other parts of our mind and body. Thus, a larger mess occurs because we simply didn’t empty our trashcan.
“Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” Ephesians 4:32
To be at peace with ourselves, we need to not only forgive ourselves, but also forgive others. Why do we want to carry all that garbage around from something that happened 20 years ago or 20 minutes ago? By committing to live a life of forgiveness, we will become more accepting of our brokenness.
4) We Need to Fall in Love with Ourselves to Accept Being Broken
I know what you are thinking. I do love myself, or at the very least, I like myself. Is this some dumb “touchy-feely” post? This is making me uncomfortable. Those are all legitimate statements.
Yet, I would challenge us to answer this question. When was the last time we were by ourselves? Honestly, I don’t mean being quiet or alone, I mean truly listening to our hearts and minds.
Seriously, when is this even possible? Our lives are crazy busy between working, having a marriage or relationship, raising kids, family obligations, church or community obligations, etc.
Bottom line, we need to make time to love ourselves. If we don’t spend time truly getting to know and love ourselves, then how are we going to be able to love anybody else the right way? Our relationships suffer, our work suffers, everything around us suffers, simply because we stopped loving ourselves.
In truth, we have to fall in love with ourselves. Somewhere along the journey, we stopped taking care of ourselves and focused on everything else. That everything else could be other people, our work, our greed, or our addictions. To truly fall in love with ourselves, we have to spend time getting to know ourselves on a deep and personal level.
5) We Must Give Gratitude to Our Brokenness
Yes, we have to thank our brokenness. Being broken doesn’t define who we are, but it makes who we are. These vulnerabilities make up our character and contribute to our identity. We wouldn’t be who we are today if it wasn’t for the brokenness that lives inside us.
When someone hurts us and they ask for our apology, we typically forgive them. And when we forgive, we are essentially saying thank you. We are thanking that person for being vulnerable and truthful. The same thing applies to being broken. Accepting our brokenness is magical. It allows us to be vulnerable and true to ourselves and others.
6) We’re Broken, So Accept It by Fixing It
I have this lawn tractor that my former neighbors graciously gave to me. They didn’t need a tractor for their new home. Last week I was cutting the lawn with the tractor. I accidentally ran over a piece of wood. Next thing that happened, the tractor blade started to make huge divots in the lawn.
Of course I got it repaired, right? No, I’m an idiot. Maybe I figured that the “blade problem” would just go away. So, this week I started the tractor up and began cutting the grass. The blade made two more huge divots in our lawn. Lesson learned. Don’t let me cut your grass.
If we just ignore the problem and think it is going to go away, we are just fooling ourselves. The problem just gets bigger or reveals its ugly head again in a different circumstance.
Fix the problem and don’t ignore it. There are people such as friends, family, and mental health professionals who can always help. It is up to us to make the first move. This is where we need to have faith in our journey.
7) Really!?! You are Broken, Too?
Hello, everyone is broken! Everyone has crap they are carrying around with them. I believe once we accept ourselves as broken, we can accept others as broken too.
Here is a quick example of how this can work. We have Sally co-worker who is totally rude and in a bad mood just about every day. She hardly ever smiles. We take this behavior personally, like we did something to offend her in some way.
But, what happens if we accept her brokenness and understand that she’s no different from ourselves. Take it a step further, we start to pray for poor Sally. And, maybe we have the guts to befriend Sally and maybe build a relationship with her. Perhaps we share our brokenness with her and make her feel like she is not alone. And maybe, just maybe, Sally starts to smile again.
Conclusion
Being broken is being human. We all have our faults and misgivings. To that end, we must accept our imperfections. Once we begin to accept ourselves as not being perfect, we will be able to accept others as imperfect, too.
Finally, I have something that I would like to share. Dieanna Estes wrote a blog post called “The Blessing in Brokenness.” She articulates how God is drawn to our imperfections. He loves us no matter what. This interesting article is at www.theskirtsociety.com.
Remember, God accepts and loves us with all of our brokenness. Now we need to accept and love ourselves as broken, too. And, once we accept our brokenness, we can also accept the fact that everyone else is just as broken as we are.
