Broken Pieces

Last Saturday, I went with Frendell to our church in MG. This was the first time I was able to attend since he was assigned there in Dec. A lot of the church family had come to visit us at home the week before and I wanted to try and worship with them for Easter. I should have known already that the day would be long and hard for me. I've had a busy week and not a lot of down time and I've had throbbing in the arm for several days. These days, it's very hard for me to determine what is causing what.. I know I've been feeling melancholy and although I expected it to happen (we were warned after all), the timing is never when I expect it and it hits me at the weirdest moments. I am also more irritable.. and Frendell has been trying to gently point this out to me, but I told him I wasn't (LOL.. that should've been my hint, eh?), but on the drive to church, I had to admit that I did not feel like myself at all... that I don't even remember what that's like anymore...

And I started thinking about this past year and all that we've had to face. And it made me sit up and wonder if the brokenness I feel happened after my back and cancer surgeries or has it been there all along and all the health issues just pushed it to the top and out in the open?  The hardest thing about blogging your journey is that you stand in the way of being judged and criticized for how you're feeling and what you're thinking. It has been the biggest risk I've taken.. to lay out to the whole world all that I have struggled through and continue to do so. I almost had to have an attitude of "I don't care what others think or say of me".. but deep down inside, there is a minute little space that once in a while calls up to me and says, "will this come back to haunt me someday?".  It's a risk.. and people will talk and say things... 

As we headed north, I told Frendell I felt very fractured, as if pieces of me were strewn all over the yard and I am trying to hobble over to pick up each piece: my health, my sanity, my spirituality, my faith, my finances, my career, my relationships, my attitude... I feel so slow in evaluating each piece and I wonder if I'm holding it in my hand and don't recognize it. And if I am holding on to it, I can't seem to locate the glue that will hold everything together.  Sometimes I don't know what to do. What will I do now? How do I even start to go back to work? I don't think he knew what to do with me at that moment. I'm sure he was going over his sermon in his mind and I was sitting on the front sit trying to distract him.  This picture played in my mind a couple of times until we got to the church. That day, Frendell talked about how God called him to the ministry. I always cry when he tells this sermon, in whatever variance and form he does it. "God At His Best". And as I was sitting there alone in the pew, with the noise level beyond what I expected, tears falling down my cheeks, it was as if God whispered to me, as Frendell was saying it from the front, that on this very Sabbath, God was at His best for me because He was sitting right there next to me, holding the different pieces of my life and He was the glue that is holding me together. I am still in awe of how God is able to touch us and tell us of His love, especially in moments when we desperately need it. Even though I still feel broken and I'm not sure how long it will take for me to even feel like I'm put back together again, there is the assurance, the hope, that Someone IS holding all my broken pieces together and putting it back gently together, piece by piece.. and who knows, maybe I'll even be better once it's all put back together. That is the journey of hope after all, isn't it?