Sunday Afternoon Tea - Broken Together

Maybe you and I were never meant to be complete
Could we just be broken together
If you can bring your shattered dreams and I'll bring mine
Could healing still be spoken and save us
The only way we'll last forever is broken together.

There was one early Autumn morning when Hubby and I were in the car driving into town when the Casting Crown's song, "Broken Together" came on K-Love.  As usual... for it is one of his favorite songs... he learned over and turned up the volume.

I think I surprised him as I turned it down and told him I hated that song.  The lyrics are absolutely stupid.  Two broken people do not make a whole!  Okay, I admit.  I was having one of those stomping of the feet, pouting of the lips, and shaking my fist (kind of) at God moments.

It had been a tough Autumn, with the unusually warm temperatures and humidity bringing with them days upon days of a high mold count.  Not a good thing for my husband, whose bipolar symptoms are grounded in the severe environmental allergies he has suffered with since his teens.  Mold is the absolute worst.

As I said, Autumn had been... hard.  But then again, he has had good and bad days and weeks since we became engaged when I was nineteen.  Most of the time I can handle them by just getting away for awhile, whether for coffee and a scone at Panera, or a walk in nice weather on the trail, or simply putting on earphones and listening to The Gray Havens or Indelible Grace.

But like anyone who deals day in and day out with any illness that affects a person's ability to think or act or be reasonable... there are hard days.  When he is not feeling the affects of his brain swelling, Hubby is one of the nicest most fun loving people you want to be around.  He loves Jesus.  My daughter's brilliant almost 4.0 brain comes from him (her grade average dipped a bit when she met my future son-in-law... but that was okay).  Christopher's ability to "think in computer code" comes from his engineering mind.

We met when I was still seventeen, just before my eighteenth birthday.  He was already twenty-five and had returned to finish his degree and go on to graduate school after serving in Viet Nam.  We met at a Christian coffeehouse.  I came to admire this tall, handsome (I have mentioned he is the spitting image of Harrison Ford), and obviously brilliant man.  He already had... issues... but nothing that turned me away. 

God was behind that meeting of two very different people with an age difference and both already having come through great difficulties.  Which brings me to that song... on that day... when I was tired of the affects of living in a fallen world.  Living through what it does to people we care for.

Actually, the song is true to some extent.  He puts people together who are broken and can make a whole.  But not because each of them is broken.  There are a lot of broken people who find each other and become even worse.  But I mean broken together in a God kind of way, as only One who is Eternal can put two people together.

I came to peace with my early years a long time ago, when.... after my father's sudden death... my sense of security and a normal home life was shattered.  It all led me to accepting the wooing of another Father, One who promises to be the "Father to the fatherless".  An accepting for which I will be forever thankful.

But still there was a lot of brokenness.  A lot of mess.  A longing for a home that did not happen until my own children were born.  What started with my father's death increased after I became a Christian. That sense of no longer belonging, of being an outcast in one's own family.  I learned early to cling to the Father of the fatherless, to my Lord, to the Comforter and Friend who came to live within.

But that is where the song is true.  For if it were not for the areas where I had been broken and then fixed, I couldn't have remained in the upside down turmoil that comes with a marriage between two severely broken people.  Because I was already put back together with a spiritual super glue from On High... I had the strength to stay in the hard times.

I had what Hubby needed and through the lessons learned the past forty years, God has taught me so very much about grace and mercy and the biting of one's lip when you would rather lash out.  I do sometimes.  Like that morning in the van when I turned the song down.

Never let anyone tell you that children can grow up to be really wonderful Jesus loving people only if raised in a perfect home.  Christopher once told me that when one grows up in our home, they learn to be really good forgivers.  I liked that.

We didn't give up when we wanted to, even when bags were packed and threats were made.  Even when we were bone weary and tired of the journey God allowed.  Even when we thought we could not suffer one more thing and still trust God.  Even then...  for He would always... always... pour out the grace needed for one more day.

It still is not easy and I doubt it will be this side of Heaven.  But life can be good and our kids are absolutely great.  If we had not stayed together, we would not have had our kids and our grandchildren.  The photo above shows us with Mr. & Mrs. Christopher on their wedding day.  With our grandchildren who are now much older.  That baby is now nearly six!  And Mr. & Mrs. Christopher are expecting their first child this summer!

We were but vessels who let God's love and mercy flow through us and His ability to forgive even when I would rather stomp my feet and pout and move to Aruba.  Alone.  With a bag of books and tea and perhaps some really good coffee.  And chocolate.

But then there wouldn't be that photo, would there.  Oh, the days may have been easier, quieter, and controlled.  But I look at the photos from that wedding and the lovely get-togethers since then (like my 60th birthday week at South Haven) and thank God for His Grace and His Mercy and His Strength.

We were broken together... in the right places.  Only in Christ can the broken be made whole.  Someday all will be made Perfect.  But until then... Grace.