The truth that emerges from straight brokenness

There is a sharp difference between the brokenness of self-pity and the brokenness that is straight as a die.  The former is as common as it comes; we’ve all been there.  The latter is the road less travelled.

The road less travelled is a road that hardly anyone takes when they’re at the point of brokenness.  Why is that you ask?  Simple, it’s the harder way.  Initially, at least.  But the road less travelled is the only way to go if you are interested in good things ahead.

It should be self-evident that the way of self-pity and of blaming others is a road to ruin.  It’s a path of misery and it leads to misery, both for the person on the path and for those anywhere within earshot, those who witness such a calamity—including those who are being harmed by the person’s behaviour.

Those on the road less travelled, however, find a way to peace notwithstanding their hardship.

The only way to peace is to take account of what is ours to own, to stay in our stuff, and to bear injustice.  Sure, life might be about as unjust as it can get, but crying foul is not the way out of it.

Whenever we find ourselves in that most broken of places, the temptation is either to dissociate or discombobulate.  Feeling broken tends towards acting out of that brokenness.  But there’s a far better way of responding to brokenness.

Whenever we are feeling broken inside, even as we face our pain, being still in it, that torment is seen, validated, even medicated by simply sitting in the court of truth.

The only way we can get better is to resist the path that makes us bitter.  This isn’t to say the grieving bitterness is an evil or inappropriate thing.  I believe in grieving bitterness is a sacred and necessary concept.  But it is only part of the process.  It won’t take a person all the way to healing.

The truth that emerges from straight brokenness, from a brokenness straight as an arrow, plunging straight into our pain, neither denying it nor dissing it, is a truth that sets us on the path to freedom, just as Jesus said, “The truth will set you free.”

To know the truth is to be set free by that truth.  If we know that we have been abused, that truth ought to set us free, at least spiritually, because we know that God sees it all.  It doesn’t mean we’ll be free from the effects of trauma, for healing from that is a long and arduous process, but the fact that all that has been done to us is seen and on record is a truth none can deny—when heaven’s light of truth shines on it.  If we’re the ones who have done harm, the truth that sets us free is the life of making amends.  NOW is the time to confess it and repent of it.

Only those who enter their brokenness via the straight gate will experience emergent truth.

Those who continue on their way of self-pity in their brokenness, will continue to be blinded to the truth, because their hearts are set against the truth.

A person only has access to the truth only when they desperately seek the truth.  If they want no part of the truth, they will continue to abide in lies.  All this is about what is resident in the heart.

Nobody can get better until they travel the straight path straight into the truth.  And then nothing is held back.  All the forces of light that heal a person are thereby accessible and available.

Probably the hardest thing about the road less travelled is that nobody will relate to it, and the only genuine solace you’ll get is from God himself, and from those who have been there.  And those who have been there never forget their way back.

The world will tell a person entering their brokenness in straight way that they’re mad, that they’re on the wrong track, but I say, let the truth be guide.  Anyone who sees the truth will be healed by the truth.

Indeed, healing is dependent in every dimension by one’s relationship with the truth.

Paradox of paradoxes: only those who refuse to insist on their vindication will be vindicated.

A meditation to close?  Go to Psalm 37.

And imbibe this depiction of the psalm by Sons of Korah.