Can You Stomach the Brokenness?

As many of you know, when I was 18 years old I was in a horrible car accident. It should have left me dead, but God had other plans for my life. Rather than taking my life, I was only (Yes, I say only) left with a shattered left forearm and a broken right ulna (that small bone on the outside of your forearm =]). My mom bathed me, fed me, brushed my teeth, dressed me…and all those other amazing things you can imagine…oh yes, she even wiped my butt. It was so humbling, but boy, I was just glad to be alive.

Over the years my arms have healed and all that’s left are the scars, the plates, and the memories. I never really thought about my arms much. The only thing I would think about regularly were how ugly my scars are, a big one on my stomach, a few on my back, two on the outside of my forearms, but the big one on the inside of my left arm. It’s there, I see it, ALWAYS. I always thought it was so ugly. People would more often than not make a comment like, “What the hell happened to your arm.” Those always really helped with the ugliness of them…NOT!

Over the past few weeks the Lord has really been showing me some stuff, I wrote a couple weeks back a blog about my strength (All Sinew and Muscle). There aren’t too many things that bother my arms theses days, but a few days ago I was doing a workout with Atlas Stones (A 100# concrete ball, basically). I was struggling at first to get the form to do them correctly…they were killing my arm…the stone would smash the tissue between the plate and the stone. After I was through I thought, wow I can’t believe after all my arms have been through I could actually do that. It left me with some war wounds and a conversation with my mom.

WARNING: DON’T SCROLL DOWN TOO FAST!!! The following pictures may make your belly turn, so skip them if you don’t do well with bloody stuff…well not bloody stuff, but surgery stuff.

 

 

 

 

 

I have been struggling lately with my own strength, I’m learning to be ok with the physical strength I possess. She said, “Lu, I truly believe that your strength and ability to brace yourself on the steering wheel at impact was the thing that saved your life. I think had you not been as strong you would have died, unable to brace the force of the collision. When I stopped to think about how selfish I had been about what God had given me, I was humbled.

This is life, we get broken, and we decide what we want to do with that? Do we want to get  up and be better in spite of what’s happened to us? Can we learn to embrace and love the scars? I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a revelation of brokenness and I will tell you, I would do it all over again even if I knew how hard it would be. Are you willing?