Reality=Brokenness

It was this week that everything just hit me. It all became reality. I would think about where I was at at this time last year, and where I thought I would be now, and just want to cry. Over the years, my family’s annual vacation to the lake is a time we all look forward to with anxious anticipation. The year may have been hard, relationships may be strained, but when we all pack up and head to our cabin, everything is okay in my family. Stress takes a leave of absence. Our family bonds are strengthened. Family vacation has always held an incredibly special place in my heart. This has got to sound overdramatic, but I am being 100% serious... It was close to sacred.

This is the first year that family vacation happened without Dad. I thought I had completely come to terms with my parents’ divorce, but this week is when it became reality. The terrible thing about a broken relationship, I have learned, is that you do not only lose all the future moments, but in a way you lose the past as well. I think that’s one of the hardest parts. When someone lets you down in an irreversible way, you lose the potential of future moments with that person, yet you can't necessarily cling to the past memories either because they have become tainted with what has happened in the present. There’s pain everywhere you look.

2 Corinthians 12:9-11 has always been my favorite verse. It has spoke to me in countless times in a hundred different ways, and tonight once again it touches me at the core:

"And He said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong."

I have realized that I have always had this picture in my head of what my life will look like in the future. It is really hard for me to face the reality that I am living in a broken family. It wasn’t just Mom and it wasn’t just Dad and it wasn’t just that random person I prayed for one time who grew up in broken families. It is now me. And that realization leaves me with so much insecurity regarding my future. But... His grace is sufficient for me. SUFFICIENT. Enough. Adequate. He is All I need. With Paul, then, can I can take pleasure in my distresses? I believe that I can. I am hurt, I am broken, I will continue to be hurt, and I am sure that I will be broken again when reality hits me in a new way. But in the midst of the tears I can claim the promise that His grace is sufficient, and though I am weak... Now I am strong.