Brokenness

Have you figured it out yet....God loves broken people?  People like you and me, who mess up, are grumpy in the morning, and have absolutely nothing in life figured out.  In fact, He uses us for His glory, in spite of ourselves.

The last day of working at Hope Christian Church taught me, reminded me of this truth like no other lesson in my life so far.  We'd finished the second day of their new school for kids with disabilities, played hard, finished adjusting all of the wheelchairs, and were waiting for lunch and some of our teammates to return before our debriefing with the pastor and teacher at the school.  The therapy team asked the parents, through our interpreter, if they had any questions for us.  We expected questions about how to use the new wheelchairs, how to help them students get physically stronger, or how we thought the school should be run.

We got something totally different and amazing.

Instead, one by one, the parents stood and shared their stories with us.  Mothers of kids with disabilities who had been told to leave their babies at the hospital and forget about them.  Grandmothers raising children with significant cognitive and physical impairments because their mother didn't want them any more.  Moms with six kids, one with a disability, without a father figure in the family.  Families who could never take their children outside their home, because Haitian culture believes these children are cursed.  God was praised, and other confessed they didn't fully trust Him yet, asking for faith and courage.  Families thanked us for coming to help them and their children, for making their lives a little easier, and told us they would be praying for us and our safety.

Stories of brokenness, stories of our need for a savior, stories which remind us we rely on our own strength when we are incredibly broken people.  Stories that remind me how much I need God's grace daily.

When I'm at home in the States, surrounded by my creature comforts and all the ways I can be strong - my job, my need for control, my bank account, my security network - it's all too easy to forget that I am broken.  That I do not have anything figured out...at all. 

I love being in Haiti, being outside my comfort zone, because Haiti points to my own brokenness, my need for God in my life.  I think we are all like Haiti - spoiled, broken, ruined by our sin, but beautiful at the core - just get outside Port Au Prince to see the Haitian coast and countryside.  Through God's grace, we are all able to be beautiful and clean again.  At church tonight our pastor said something I thought was amazing: "God wants us to drown in the sea of His grace."  But first, I realized, we each need to know our own brokenness, something my new Haitian friends know and live daily.

Moments like this one are why I think missions trips are so important...to strip away our lives, to see what's really there, to realize that we, like our Christian brothers and sisters everywhere, need Christ more desperately than we could ever realize.  To realize our hurt, our pain is part of our human experience.  To realize that despite our fancy, comfortable American lives, we are not so different from people in Haiti, Africa, or South America.  We are all meant to drown in God's amazing grace and love, to allow Him to turn our brokenness to beauty and glory for Him.