Brokenness

"What excites you?" he asked her.

"Nothing anymore,"  she replied.

In that moment, my heart ripped open and something inside of me died a little.
Once upon a time, I had answered exactly like her when I had been asked a very similar question.

There are so many beautiful people in the world. There are those who wear flowers in their hair and dance in the rain. There are those with eyes that sparkle who laugh harder than most. There are others who find joy in basically everything.

But if you look closer, that person over there might have just lost a best friend. That friend is full of disappointment. And over there, that person pushes away almost all of their meal.  That person in the corner struggles with depression.

People are broken. 

At the Region V Invitational last week, I was confronted with brokenness. I saw it everywhere. I saw it and I felt it.

I felt it in her answer when she said that nothing excited her anymore.
I felt it when I looked into his eyes and right through that wall that had grown between us. I watched him as he struggled inside of himself.
I felt it when the most innocent of them all hugged me as tightly as she could because goodbyes are hard. 

I felt it when the very youngest nodded and threw her arms around my legs when I asked if she needed a hug.
I felt it when that fighter cried into my shoulder because nobody really likes change. 

I felt it when they were disappointed at the loss.

The brokenness stretched from corner to corner and it suffocated me. It tore me open and shattered my heart into a million pieces. It resurfaced pain and trials that I had tried to bury and shove deep down inside of myself.

Most times, I would rush outside and breath in the fresh air in attempts to escape from the pain I saw everywhere.
On the drive home, I cried so hard until I fell asleep because I was so mad at how unfair the world seemed. Everything seemed so screwed up and wrong and there was nothing that I could do about it. At that moment, as far as I was concerned, there was nothing to look forward to because of how wounded this world is and how much brokenness there is.

But now I realize that I was looking at this from the completely wrong angle.

We hurt and we suffer. We go through trials. We are broken. 

But that's not a bad thing.
Our souls are on a spiritual battlefield between good and evil and we are constantly under attack from the devil who wants nothing more than for us to give into his lies.

He tells us all sorts of things. He will tell us that we aren't loved. That we aren't cared about. That we aren't good enough. That we are lonely. That we aren't good at speech and debate. That we will never win. That nothing we do matters. 

And the sad thing? More often than not, it's hard to push those thoughts out and we give into those lies because for some reason, it is so much easier to accept the self-pity and fall into misery.

But life is not supposed to be easy. This battle was NEVER supposed to be easy. 

"Indeed all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted." 

-2 Timothy 3:12

We are soldiers for Christ and if the devil isn't shooting at us, then we're doing it wrong. The evil one targets those who are dangerous to him and give their all to further God's kingdom here on earth. We should be those targets. We want to be shot at. We want the suffering so that we can give it to the Lord for His glory.

"Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament but the world will rejoice; you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy."

-John 16:20

Suffering can do one of two things. It can bring us down or it can encourage us. We can decide to let the trials bring us down and push us into misery and sadness and depression. Or we can be encouraged that the devil thinks we are dangerous and we lift our hearts to God and give Him our sufferings and offer them up for His glory.
So yes. We are broken. We are human. We live in a fallen and wounded world. Brokenness is everywhere. Pain is put into our lives and we are called to suffer. The devil is scared at what all of us can do for Christ's kingdom.

At regionals, it was clear to me.
We are all being shot at left and right. 

We can fall into misery or we can give it to Him.

We can do this right or we can do this wrong. 

There's really no in-between.
How are you going to respond?