All of us have had issues in our lives that have broken our hearts, gutted us, and caused us to think that we couldn’t go on.  Situations like divorce, the death of a loved one, financial or medical hardships are all things that can break us down, causing us to feel like our world has ended.

I’ve endured a couple of situations where I felt like there was no recovery.  Seasons of life where I felt as if I would never be able to get back on my feet.  Times when I felt like my life was simply drifting along with the currents unable to gain full control again.

There have been times that I got knocked down and I got right back up again.  Other times, I stayed down because I was too afraid to get back up.  I hate to admit that there have been many times I played the victim card where I wanted people to feel as sorry for me as much as I felt sorry for myself. 

Feeling sorry for yourself gets you nowhere!

Life is full of broken hearts, failed dreams, damaged relationships, and devasting failure.

The purpose of a marinade in cooking is to give the thing being marinated flavor. The meat takes on the flavor of the marinade.

When you marinate in brokenness you take on the flavor of brokenness and the majority of the time that flavor is bitterness.  You become bitter with life, with others, with God and with yourself.  Stay broken long enough and you will begin to believe the lie that you can never be whole again.

We cannot allow ourselves to marinate in our brokenness.

I know this to be true because I marinated myself in brokenness for far too long.  I allowed the circumstances of my life to distort my view of how good life could be.  In all reality, what I really was doing was believing the lie that I was above being broken.  “This shouldn’t be happening to me” was my cry.

What happened to me, what’s happened to you, isn’t fair and quite possibly you didn’t deserve it.  Sometimes our brokenness is simply the reaping of the consequences of our actions.  Other times, we suffer because of the bad choices of others.  Either way, life isn’t fair.  Stuff happens.  None of us are beyond the realm of brokenness.

But because we wallow in self-pity, we end up marinating in brokenness and we end up taking on a victim-mentality flavor.

Heartache comes to us all.  You cannot avoid it.  If you are alive, it’s going to happen . . . more than once!  Bad things happen to good people, and God allows it to happen.  I am not saying that God causes it or wants it to happen, but because of the wonderful gift of free will that God gave mankind, He abides by our decisions.  Our decisions affect other people.  God allows that.

Even God abides by our decisions and is affected by them.  God is not immune to suffering!

How do we keep from marinating in brokenness? 

First, it is okay to be broken.  It’s okay to hurt, to cry, to scream, to be angry, to question!  Your emotions need to be able to express themselves, to have a voice.  Bottling up your emotions and not processing them is dangerous.

Secondly, we must give ourselves permission to process those emotions and to process the brokenness.  Get some counseling, talk to a friend, pray, write, journal, whatever you need to do to process the situation.  Don’t fall into the “What If” game or the “I Should have” game.  Just accept what is and process that. 

Thirdly, take responsibility for what happened.  This sounds wrong I know.  It sounded horrible when a friend of mine counseled me to do this during a time of brokenness in my life. I kept saying, “but it’s not my fault.”  He agreed that it wasn’t my fault, but it was my life and I had to accept it now as part of my story and my journey.  I had to take responsibility for how I was going to let it affect me and how I was going to deal with it.

Honestly, in that situation, I didn’t take full responsibility.  I allowed myself to marinate in brokenness for far too long.  I played the victim card.  I felt sorry for myself.  Sadly, because I didn’t take full responsibility, I allowed myself to fall into a deep, dark depression.

Lastly, invite God into the brokenness.  This may be hard because we want to question God as to why this situation happened, or even blame God for it.  His shoulders are big enough for us to cry on, and even carry our accusations of him.  He won’t get mad at you.  He understands, he cares, and he will never leave you in the midst of your brokenness.  Invite him into the pain. It’s really simple, “Jesus, I invite you into this pain and this situation.  Help me.” 

What’s not okay is to stay broken because God wants us healed.  Brokenness will happen to us without our permission or choice.  However, it is our choice to get healed and not to marinate in that brokenness.  It may take some time to get healed and to fully recover but you can.  There is hope!

Don’t allow yourself to marinate in brokenness, instead learn how to marinate in God’s love and goodness for you and towards you. This is a lesson I am still learning myself.

Related Link: Three Things I Learned From Brokenness

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