Beauty in the Broken Pieces

As I sat across the table from her listening to her story, a voice inside me was crying out, "I know you!" Truth is I was her and am her sometimes even now. She shared the pain of not feeling valued. Oh how I know her. Our stories aren't the same, but the heartache is.

When I was in the 8th grade, my parents separated. I remember the day that I came home from school to find my dad sitting on the couch waiting for me with his suitcase on the floor beside him. He told me about his plans to go, but all I could hear in my head was "I am leaving you." I begged him to take me with him. I remember the pain of him walking out the door and the shatter of my heart into tiny pieces when he drove away.

What followed after that moment was many years of searching. I had an empty space in my soul that longed for someone to make me feel less broken. To make me feel cherished. To make me feel loved.

To give me value.

Part of my struggle was reconciling God as Father. You see even as an adult, I was convinced that there was no way that God could love me with an unconditional love. That seed of doubt was planted when my father left me broken as a child. If he could leave, then there is nothing unconditional about fatherly love. I couldn't take the rejection from God too. So I kept Him at arms length for a long time.

Something changed for me the first time I heard someone call Him "Abba." It means Daddy. I remembered the feelings attached to that word. I remembered the love attached to that word. That I wanted. More than anything. That.

Daddy.

Abba.

I can't tell you the exact moment that God started placing the pieces of my heart together. I can tell you that I even broke those pieces into smaller ones with some of the choices I made during that search. I can tell you that I still had missing pieces when I got married. I still have some today.

The more time I spend with Him, the more my heart heals. You can still see some of the breaks, but there is a beauty in those fractures too. It's in the midst of the breaks that you can actually see the healing. You can see the loving hands that put them together again. 

I am reminded by those broken pieces put back in place that I am valued.

So as I sit across from her as she shares her broken pieces, I can tell her that healing is possible. That there is only one place to find that which she seeks.

In Him.

Others were given in exchange for you.
I traded their lives for yours
because you are precious to me.
You are honored, and I love you.
Isaiah 43:4