I’m of the belief that, eventually, we all get broken. I can’t tell you when, but it will happen. For me, it was during my college years. I struggled from the start, but then after my mother got sick (cancer), things got worse. Some place between the strain of trying to stay in school at Georgia Tech and caring for my dying mother and working, something snapped, something overflowed, something fell to the ground.

In all honesty, I was shattered by the whole experience. And while that was the lowest point of my life, I can say with equal conviction, that I know that God put me back together again, stronger than before, and I believe, more useful.

One might say that it is in this breaking process that we learn how to love. And as a friend reminded me, often times people, even in the church, are slow to listen to those in need, due to their own unwillingness to accept their own brokenness. To open their hearts to the suffering of those in need, would be to hold a mirror up to their own pain.

And certainly, I understand the perceived need to keep it moving, to smile to stop one’s self from crying. I get all of that, I truly do. But then I ask you, what better purpose of our own suffering, if not to better serve others?

The longer I live and the more I see, the more I am convinced that this experience we call “life” is about restoration. Yet it seems that restoration must always be preceded by upheaval and brokenness. And so it seems to be the same regarding the birth of any good thing.