Fragmented, But Not Forgotten

During my pregnancies, I knew there was an impenetrable connection. My body was literally being taken over by this brand-new creation. My body was the source of nourishment, providing life-giving nutrients and oxygen. This baby was part of me. He or she shares my DNA, my blood, and my life. We live together, unified, unable to be separated without the threat of death. When I made the choice to abort my baby, I was unknowingly choosing to leave a piece of myself, a piece of my heart, in the container that held my dead child. I was left fragmented, incomplete. 

There are other times in my life that pieces of my heart have been torn off and tossed away. As I sat the other night, I pondered putting these pieces back together. How is something like that even possible? It seems inconceivable. Especially the ones that I tore off myself! But there is no way for me to continue living without a whole heart. Imagine if literal pieces of your heart are missing, it simply cannot beat as it was intended to, and you would be incapacitated, if not dead. The same is true for the spiritual pieces of our hearts. They must be mended.   

Eventually, I acknowledge that only God can mend these fragments of my heart back together. These are places only He can attend to. Piece by piece, the Lord walks me through the despair that has left me distraught, in physical pain, and nearly unable to walk upright. Jesus came to bind up the broken-hearted and set the captives free! There is not a heart that He cannot make whole, there is not a life too far gone for His touch of restoration. There is nothing we can do that isn’t covered by the cross. 

Often, I feel a consistent pull in my mind to disregard these truths and agree with the lie that nothing will change, that I will remain broken and incomplete, fragmented. I must choose to silence that. In turn, I must choose to ingest His Word that it may be lived out in and through me. In that there is insurmountable peace, indescribable love, and joy unthinkable! I have not lived fully into this yet, but I have faith that it is beautiful and that it is the life that I was born to live. And so were you.

-S.B.