Embracing Brokenness & Receiving Healing

As I sit at a local Denny's studying and reading I overheard a conversation at the table next to me.  Now I was not trying to listen in, but the conversation taking place was louder than the music in the background. These two men in their mid-thirties were talking about infidelity.  One of the men had learned that his girlfriend had cheated on him, sometime in the not too distant past, and now he was trying to make sense of his life.  His friend offered all sorts of theories about why women cheat, that basically boiled down to women want to brag about having sex with rich or famous men while men just go for hotness.  From the various women I know I would say that his theories were extremely flawed; in reality he was himself trying to make sense of why his previous girlfriends had cheated on him.  Two men trying to make sense of the brokenness they feel from being betrayed by women they loved.  Two men theorizing about how every woman will cheat because she is only after money and fame.  Two men who are trying to hide behind rationalizing their brokenness instead of embracing it as a starting point for healing.

In one of my many ADD moments of the night I was checking my Facebook and read a status update about how a spouse's infidelity had broken up a home.  Reading some of this person's other updates revealed a person who is trying to hide their brokenness with shallow attempts to fill a void.  As I read their update my heart just sunk inside of me.  I felt like I wanted to shed tears for them but had none cry.

What is it about brokenness that makes us want to hide from it?  What is it about us that make it so easy to deceive ourselves into believing that we are not really broken when we are in a thousand pieces?  Some of the saddest things that I have seen in my life are people who have never confronted the brokenness in their lives and thus end up living lives that are just designed to mask the pain instead of heal it.  I have met people who are so full of resentment and hate because of something someone had done to them at some point in their life and they never dealt with the brokenness, and as result in a very insidious way that brokenness actually began to have dominion over their life.  It is a very sad thing that does not have to be.  Now I am not saying that a person cannot be angry or upset with someone who has wronged them, but how much more of your life are you going to give a person who has hurt you?  How long are you going to feed your brokenness instead of embracing it as a reality that needs to be healed?  My prayers go out to the broken hearted tonight.  I pray that you find a place of healing.  I pray that you embrace your brokenness as a starting place for wholeness to emerge.