Torn: When Life Tears Us Apart

+Jeanne Takenaka @JeanneTakenaka

There are those days—those seasons—when it feels like life tears me apart. Not in the big “I have cancer,” or “my husband’s leaving me,” kind of ways.

It’s more in those ways of the daily challenges, the struggles that rip away small pieces of me. Those days when a boy in-my-face defies me repeatedly.

And I react.

When those things that were supposed to work out a certain way go terribly wrong.

 

When we discover a boy needs surgery.

When Hubs has to leave on an unexpected trip.

It’s not only the big scary things of life that tear us apart.

Often, it’s the constant rip of smaller things that shred pieces of us away.

Sometimes it’s in the constant doing that we become tattered. It’s in the seasons—where there’s no time for a break, no opportunity for rest—when we come undone. When there are more to-dos than time to do them.

 

How do we piece ourselves back together?

I’ve learned through trying that I can’t fix myself in my own strength. And fixing never, ever happens in a moment.

Rather, mending happens as I spend time connecting. We were not made to walk our days alone.

Although at times it seems easier.

God designed us to live in community with others. And the thing is? Sometimes Community hurts. And other times those connections offer healing. And rest. And refreshment.

It’s when, after the boy’s anger is spent and sanity returns, we sit in his room. His head on my lap. And we talk. I stroke his hair. And we talk. We both sk forgiveness and offer it.

We connect.

 

Connection happens when hubs and I sit at the table, or in our bedroom, and rehash all that’s happened in each of our lives—separately and together. Holding hands. Perhaps me leaning on his shoulder. Finding strength in his presence.

The mending comes in reaching out to trusted friends to beg for prayer. For the big things and the small.

Mending strengthens us when there is a circle around us who lift us up in the crazy seasons.

Who will speak life to our battered spirits when death wants to prevail.

 

Oftentimes, those scattered pieces of who we are can be taped back together when our hearts connect with others.

If we’re honest, we—all of us—have times when we come undone. When bits and pieces of who we are drift away on the winds of life.

Sometimes we need others to remind us of who we are. Of who Jesus created us to be.

Always, we need to come back to Jesus, to find ourselves in Him. To trust that He will heal us. He will put our hearts, our selves, back together.

Often, He uses others as His hands and feet when we walk through the dis-membering times. But He’s always with us in those times of hard. And it’s often in those seasons where we most see our need to cling to Him.

 

So in those times when life threatens to rip me apart, I choose to hold on tight to Jesus and to be intentional about keeping connections strong. For it’s in being knit with Jesus and with others that I am held together.

What about you? What holds you together when life tries to tear you apart? How do those around you hold you up in the hard seasons?

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Today I’m linking up with Holly Barrett’s Testimony Tuesday and Kelly Balarie’s #RaRaLinkup